I’m a little bit horrified that I’m already writing my second Christmas soap recipe of the year, but that is the way of soap. It must age, and it would be a bit rude of me to publish this recipe too close to Christmas for anybody else to make it. So I’m writing about Christmas soap well over a month before Christmas—which, of course, means I initially made this soap before Canadian Thanksgiving. Yipes. Where is the year going?
Anyhow, I digress. I just loved the idea of a candy cane soap for Christmas this year. Something crisp and bright, with a mellowing note of vanilla, and fun swirls of red, green, and white. So perfect for Christmas that it’s pretty much cliché. A delicious, minty cliché.
This is why you need an immersion blender for this soap.
For this soap, an immersion blender is mandatory to get nice, smooth colour—otherwise you’ll end up with a bunch of lumps of the oxides through the soap, which rather ruins the effect. If you’re anything like me, you’ll love watching the clumps get blasted into smooth, creamy oblivion. Muahahahaha.
Candy Cane Christmas Soap
40% olive oil (pomace) (USA / Canada)
25% refined coconut oil (USA / Canada)
20% lard or beef tallow
10% avocado oil
5% castor oil (USA / Canada)Calculate to a 6% superfat
Per 500g (1.1lbs) oils:
- 23g peppermint essential oil (USA / Canada)
- 8g bezoin or vanilla essential oil
- 1 tbsp white kaolin clay (USA / Canada)
- 1 tbsp oil soluble titanium dioxide
- 1–2 tsp red iron oxide
- 1–2 tsp green chromium oxide
Follow standard soap making procedure. When you reach a moderately thick trace (think unwhipped heavy cream), add the essential oils, and use the immersion blender to blend in the white kaolin clay (USA / Canada) and titanium dioxide. The immersion blender is not optional for this recipe unless you want little blobs of the oxides and titanium oxide suspended in your soap.
Pour one third of the soap into another bowl and blend in the red iron oxide. Pour this soap into the prepared mold.
Pour another third of the soap (that is still white at this point) into the mold over the red soap.
Blend the green chromium oxide into the remaining third of the soap and pour that into the mold.
If you want to get fancy, you can also add a bit of French Green clay to the green part, and some Australian red reef clay to the red part. I did this, but left it out of the recipe since it didn’t really make that big of a difference in the final product and requires more ingredients.
Swirl the layers together if needed (if your trace was thin enough they will have swirled themselves).
Let saponify for 24 hours, slice, and let age at least 3 weeks.
whenever ive done soap with peppermint my cut soap ends up really oily…..
do you think the addition of the titanium dioxide & clay helps make that a non-issue? do you add them mostly for color (or colour if you prefer)?
i love the smell of peppermint in a body wash and soap, especially at xmas/wintertime 😀
Hmm, interesting. I don’t think the titanium dioxide is doing anything as I’ve made other pepperminty soaps without it, and they’ve been fine. It might be the clay, but honestly, I cannot think of any reason peppermint EO would cause this when no other EO does. Weeeeeeird. How much peppermint EO do you use? And which one is it? Hmmm. I’d love to figure this one out 😛 Do you have any photos?
I add clay to all my soaps and shampoos because I find it helps with both slip (so I can shave with all my bars!) and cleansing. As for the colour of clay I use, and the titanium dioxide & oxides, that’s all preference for the individual bar 🙂
I am so pleased with how the scent of this one turned out! The benzoin EO really mellows the peppermint out enough to smell just like a candy cane.
You soap is gorgeous. My first Christmas soap had little blobs of green and red the size of marbles in a tan-coloured soap, with white soap on top to make it look like Christmas cake when it was sliced. It was fun!
Thanks, Sylvia! Your Christmas cake soap sounds beautiful as well—did you end up having to do a few batches to get all the different coloured marbles?
This soap looks great! And I can only imagine how wonderfully it smells!
Thanks, Anna! I just love it 🙂 I can’t wait to start using it… I am making myself wait until December before breaking out the holiday soaps.
Hehehe I just made this soap in the beginning of October too! I used Vanilla and peppermint eo’s but had no titanium dioxide so I used kaolin clay…bahh it turned a bit brown…also used redcreef clay but slso turned brown pink. Still super pretty and smells like a dream as I’ve been using it for a week now:). I do have the oxides but a bit scared of trying it hehe. Not sure why:) I also have the green and now I really want to try it hehe.
Oooh, lovely 🙂 My Christmas soap from last year contained more natural colorants and definitely had a more brown/yellow tinge to it than this one does. Don’t be afraid to try the oxides, they’re super easy to use and open up an entire new world of colour 🙂 Merry Christmas soap season!
This may be a dumb question?, but do you add Lye to this soap? I’ve never made soaps before, but I want to make them for Christmas presents, and I’m excited to try this recipe 😀
Yes, I do 🙂 You’ll just end up with a pot of melted fats if you don’t add the lye! I never provide amounts of lye with my recipes since I provide everything in percents—I usually just provide a superfat percentage (also known as a lye discount percentage). So, when you go to enter this recipe into a soap calculator, you’ll be able to choose your superfat percentage, and enter in the total amount of the recipe you’d like to make (in g or oz). Then the calculator will give you final, finite amounts of each ingredient to use (including the lye). Have fun and measure carefully!
Awesome, thank you! 😀
🙂
Marie, I have to tell you the news–I made my first batch of soap yesterday, and it looks like it turned out quite well! There are no pockets of lye or anything awful as far as I can tell. It was such an amazing process–I loved the moment when I added the lye to the oils and it immediately started to change color and thicken! Who knew that chemistry could be such a fun, at-home adventure? The most time consuming part was getting the oils and lye solution to the same temperature, but even that wasn’t bad.
I recently commented on your cocoa butter body bars recipe, asking your advice on homemade bubble bath. I so appreciate your recipes and endless, amazing tips! Reading all your posts about soap-making gave me confidence about my ability to pull it off, and all that reading really got the steps drilled into my head, so the only thing I was worried about was measuring my ingredients properly. I can’t believe how easy it was … of course, the true test will be in 3 weeks when I test some, though I didn’t have any animal fat so my soap is all vegetable oils. I know from your posts that my soap will probably take twice as long to harden.
I was going for a eucalyptus-spearmint scent, but right now all I can smell is spearmint. I’m hoping it mellows considerably while it cures. I hate to think of the eucalyptus and sweet orange EO’s I wasted if I’m just going to end up with toothpaste-scented bars. BUT, the important thing is that it was fun and so far, looks like it worked the way it should! THANK YOU for sharing your wisdom! Truly, if not for getting so well acquainted with your blog, I might have remained too scared to try it. I’ll be making soap again tomorrow!
Oh, one more thing if you don’t mind. I’m experiencing some uncertainty when it comes to making scent combinations, especially now that I’m only smelling spearmint in my bars. I used 1.25 oz spearmint, 1 oz sweet orange, and 1.75 eucalyptus (total of 4 oz, for 4 lbs oils). Based on the scent now, I’m thinking I should have done maybe 2.5 eucalyptus, 1 sweet orange, and .5 spearmint. I mean, the spearmint is craaazy strong! Do you have an EO guide to help you come up with your combinations, or do you rely on trial and error? As I said I’m making soap again tomorrow, and am a little scared about how to scent the new batch. I’ve got the three I’ve already mentioned, plus lavender, cedarwood, rose bulgaria 3%, and tiny bottles each of rosemary, clary sage, lemon, bergamot, and patchouli. My sister wants a rose soap, but I’m afraid to waste my most expensive EO on only my second batch of soap! Any guidance or scent suggestions you might give would be wonderful!
Exciting! There are few things more awesome than going and making something you used to buy 😀 I still remember my first batch of soap… including worrying for days that I was getting some sort of very slow acting chemical burn from the lye, haha. I’ve since chilled out on that front 😛 A tip for the oils/water/same temp thing (which is definitely annoying)—mix & melt everything the night before, and let it come to room temperature overnight! You have to be careful to ensure you’ve achieved a true trace (you can be faked out by the cooler, thicker texture of the oils), but it is certainly much less fussy. It’ll take longer to trace, but that means you have oodles of time to do swirls, layers, and different colours before the batch gets too thick to work with.
How funny you just did a spearmint & eucalyptus soap—I have a peppermint & eucalyptus batch that’s just about aged right now 🙂 As for the mint vs. eucalyptus scents, you’ll learn over time which scents are stronger than others, and which ones have more staying power. The mints tend to be quite strong, whereas I’ve found pine, spruce, and fir EOs barely survive saponification, let alone aging 🙁 Just work with relatively small batches while you get that sorted, and do some reading into how different EOs survive & blend (also read up on anchoring EOs that extend the overall scent). That’s really all I’ve ever done, and it usually works out fairly well lol. I am a fan of experimentation & learning by doing, I guess 😛
I would definitely not put rose EO in soap, especially a dilution. The 3% will likely not come through at all (or survive saponification), so it would be a costly waste. Whenever I want rose in soap, I use a fragrance oil. Not ideal, but also not $500 of essential oils, so that’s an ok trade by my standards. Cedarwood will likely not survive well, either. Patchouli is great in soap and lasts for ages, and lavender is also awesome (and affordable). My favourite soaping EOs end up being 5-fold citrus (lemon, orange, lime, and grapefruit are faves) and spice (cinnamon is quite inexpensive, and can be nicely highlighted with slightly pricier ones like clove and cardamom—also blends well with citrus).
Hope that helps! Thanks so much for reading, supporting, and DIYing with me, it is so appreciated 🙂 I love hearing that I’m helping people try new things and learn how to stop buying and start doing. Please do get in touch if you have any other questions!
Marie, thank you so much for your reply and answers to my questions about EO’s. Your comments about rose EO are especially helpful. I had a feeling it would be a huge waste to use it in soap–I’ll save it for scrubs and maybe a lip balm! I have a big, lovely bag of rose buds to use, and I’m hoping maybe I can do a soap with them at some point when I’ve gained enough experience. Yesterday I made a soap using coffee as the water base for the lye solution, and put coffee grounds in for exfoliation. Fingers crossed it works out nicely! But I figure even if not, I’m learning! Thanks again–you are wonderful!
No worries 🙂 It’ll make a beautiful lip balm—just be sure you like the taste of flowers 😉 I find I don’t really like lavender lip balm even though I love lavender as I find it’s a strange flavour to have near my mouth. Maybe that’s just me, though.
A head’s up on the rose buds—they will turn black/brown when saponified. Sigh. Calendula petals are the only flower petal I’ve encountered that maintains its colour through saponification, sadly. Your coffee soap sounds awesome, though! I made a similar one when I first started making soap & I found it was awesome for getting garlic and fish smells off my hands 🙂
Hello, I am using this recipe for a Chemistry Lab for school, however, I am not adding;
8g bezoin or vanilla essential oil
1 tbsp kaolin clay
1 tbsp oil soluble titanium dioxide
1–2 tsp red oxide
1–2 tsp green oxide
Will this effect the outcome of the recipe?
Hi Joe! You cannot just drop half the ingredients in a recipe and not effect the outcome 😛 In this case, the bar will basically just be a plain bar of peppermint soap. The benzoin/vanilla is what makes it smell candy cane like, the kaolin adds slip to the bar (making it good for shaving), and the rest of the ingredients are for colour.
Hi Marie! I have been lurking around on your site for a few weeks now and it is fantastic! I hope I can find some time to make some of the recipes you have listed on your site. I just love maing my own products! I already make my own soap, but want to try out different techniques. I would really like to make a swirl soap, but my question is this- how do you mix the colors into the uncolored soap? With your stick blender? Do you have to just wash it off between moving from one color to the next? I can’t wait to try this out. Thanks in advance:)
Hi Melissa! I have found it’s best to use the stick blender to blend in the colours, especially if you are using oxides or clays—the blender ensures a nice, even colour. And yes, if you’re going from one colour to another it’s generally best to wash it off in between, especially if it’s a big colour difference. Between something like orange and yellow I might not bother, but between blue and white I definitely would! Thanks for reading 🙂
Hi! I have been reading up on soaps for months and I am about to take the splurge with this recipe for gifts 🙂 Just curious, could I make this recipe like your method for the cinnamon soap recipe (where the oils and lye get to room temperature before mixing)? That might make my first time a little easier! THANKS for your response!
Hi Anna! You can soap anything CP at room temperature 😀 It’s awesome! I highly recommend it 🙂
Hi,
I love your website! I have been inspired by your candy cane soap recipe. I have never made soap before. This will be my first attempt. I have a couple of questions. Are all of the oxides for color only? Could I just use regular soap colors? Which works better, the Bezion or the Vanilla essential oil? Also, I have never used the soap calculator. Can you offer any helpful suggestions on how it works? Do I have to put in my total number of ounces first to calculate all of the ingredients?
Lastly, what does the kaolin clay do? Is this ingredient vital to the final soap product?
Thanks for your help! Marti
Hi Marti! Yes, the oxides are just for colour—if you have another dye you prefer for soap you can use that 🙂 I prefer benzoin as it’s both cheaper and I find it lasts longer. The kaolin clay is for slip, and makes this bar a good shaving bar as well. You can leave it out if you want.
Soap Calc has a page of directions here. I’ve also gone in and done a screen cap where I’ve highlighted the only fields you need to worry about/edit 🙂 It’s much easier than it looks!
Hi Marie !
This will be my second soap I have ever made but I just got my red iron oxide and it dosent look red at all ! Much more of a orange than I thought ! Disappointed, as my candycane soap is not going to look much like candycane ! No time to order more, hope it looks better once its finished !
Ah, that’s odd! It shouldn’t be orange, but more of a brick red. In this video I do a comparison of it with several other red pigments so you can see the differences and the end colour (though you cannot use carmine in soap as it is not colour stable in high pH environments). If you have a red or pink mica on hand you can use that instead 🙂
Thanks Marie, I guess it is more of a brick red, (being that its iron oxide!) but your finished soap looks really nice and actually red ! Either way it will have to wait another day, as I was getting my oils and lye to trace my stickblender overheated (because with your basic recipe (roomtemp) it took me almost 20 mins for a light trace, is that normal?) and died ! Blast ! So I finished up with a whisk and just made something else ! Wasnt even going to attempt titanium dioxide without a stickblender at your warning ! Sent partner to value village to find a new one for me ! Second attempt at candy cane soap tomorrow ! Thanks for your awesomeness !
Diluting the red iron oxide does help it look redder—lots and lots of it can shift towards the brown side.
I wouldn’t say that’s normal for my house and what room temperature is here, but it is understandable since this soap doesn’t include many harder oils; if you want to speed things up you could swap out the avocado oil for some shea butter. When I made this one I used the matching temps at ~110°F, so it didn’t take ages (higher temps speed up trace). Sorry to hear about your immersion blender, though—I hope its replacement is up to the task!
I think my old farmhouse kitchen may be on the cooler side, and I will give the shea butter a try next time.Thank you ! Looking forward to your book !
No worries—happy soaping! 😀
Marie, I think I used too much of Red Iron oxide… The soap is ready, the lather is perfect, but the color stays on my skin and colors the bottom of my shower… I will have to rebatch it, but will the colorant dilute?
In order for anything to dilute you have to dilute it—simply re-batching something won’t do anything. You’d need to re-batch it with more soap to dilute it 🙂