Feijoa soap

Difficulty: Advanced
Time: 1 hr
Yields: 500 g soap

Feijoas are great to add to your soaps for their exfoliant properties, both from the fruit itself but also from the texture of the flesh and seeds. You don’t have to worry about the fruit going bad in the soap, because the fruit, along with the oils and lye, will go through a saponification process in a high pH environment, and will keep anything from spoiling. However, there are a few things you need to take into account. Adding fruit will also add moisture, therefore to compensate for the extra moisture from the feijoa pulp that is added, you will use less water than usual to prepare you lye. Additionally, the extra sugar content can make your soap go through a hotter than usual gelling phase, so you will need to keep an eye on your soap during the first few hours.

If you have never made cold-process soap before, I strongly suggest you check out the basic cold process soap tutorial first.

Before starting, please read the safety and precautions post, especially since this tutorial requires the handling of caustic soda!

ONE: First, prepare your lye. Weigh out the caustic soda in a small container. As mentioned before, you are using less water than usual to prepare your lye to compensate for the extra moisture added from the fruit. The water discount in the recipe is 20 ml. Add 80 ml of water in a small pyrex or other heat proof glass jug, and then carefully add the caustic soda to the water and gently stir until all the caustic soda has dissolved. Set aside to cool.

While you are waiting for the lye to cool down, you can prepare your colour and feijoa pulp.

TWO: Scoop out the flesh of one large or two small feijoas, and set aside two tablespoons of pulp.

THREE: In a small container, weigh out 15 ml of rice bran oil and add one teaspoon of green mica. I used Kelly Green Mica from Brambleberry (USA) here. Using a little whisk, mix the mica into the oil. If there are little clumps of mica at the surface, a spray of isopropyl alcohol will break them up.

Next, it’s time to get the oils ready.

FOUR: Weigh out the coconut oil in a pyrex jug and heat in microwave on high for one minute or until melted.

FIVE: Add the remaining rice bran oil, olive oil and castor oil to the now melted coconut oil.

When the lye has cooled down to room temperature, add one teaspoon of sodium lactate to the lye and stir.

SIX: Make sure you are still in protective gear (goggles and gloves), carefully pour the lye to the oils, avoiding any splashes. Give it a quick pulse with the stick blender.

SEVEN: Add the feijoa pulp and continue stick blending until light trace.

From this point on, you will have to work very quickly as the soap will thicken fast.

EIGHT: Next, pour in the colour/oil mixture and stir it until the colour is evenly dispersed into the soap.

NINE: Add the fragrance and stir using a whisk, rather than a stick blender, to prevent the soap from thickening even further.

TEN: Pour the soap into the mold.

Tap the mold gently on the bench a free times to get rid of any air bubbles.

ELEVEN: Leave to cure in the mold for a few days. Because of the added feijoa pulp, the soap will be softer than usual and need a bit more curing, especially if you have left out the sodium lactate.

TWELVE: When the soap has hardened enough to take out of the mold, cut it into 4 bars and leave them to cure for another 6-8 weeks.