I had so much fun crafting up these creamy, sweet-smelling, sparkly bars of tea latte inspired soap. The batter is silky smooth and has great play time, so the whole mixing-pouring-swirling experience is calm and easy and fun (no pudding panic here, ha!). A dusty brown base is accented with milky white swirls reminiscent of the swirls on top of a latte, with the brown hue coming from the essential oil blend. The tops of the bars are sculpted up and decorated with sprinkles of tea leaves and a bit of something sparkly for a little something special. I think these bars of Cream of Earl Grey Soap are pretty darn lovely!
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The base of the soap features quite a lot of liquid oils—more than I often use. This is because I wanted the batter to remain relatively thin while I worked with it so I could create some intricate swirls. I’m also soaping a bit warmer than I often do for the same reason. I’ve had some people ask why I’m using so much olive oil lately, and it’s simply because I have so much of it. Oh my heavens. My inventory-ing revealed that I’ve “run out” and re-purchased olive oil… a couple times… without actually running out in the first place because I apparently can lose 8L of olive oil in my basement. What a skill, eh? Anywho, rice bran oil or canola oil would both be good alternatives; you could even create a blend if you so desire!
Our essential oil blend is sweet, tea-like palmarosa, bright bergamot, and warm, sugary benzoin resinoid. It smells all kinds of sweet and warm and tea-like, and makes me think of chunky knits and handmade pottery and foamy milk on the top of lattes. The blend carries over well to the finished bars and lasts well throughout aging—I made these bars in November and they still smell great!
I used normal bergamot essential oil (as opposed to the variety with the photosensitizing compounds removed) as soap is a wash-off product, but feel free to use whichever you have. I don’t recommend using a different citrus essential oil as bergamot is such an integral part of the Earl Grey blend. You could use a vanilla fragrance oil (make sure you know how it behaves in soap, though!) in place of the benzoin; I wouldn’t recommend vanilla essential oil as it’s quite pricey and I find it doesn’t last well in soap. I haven’t found anything that stands in well for palmarosa—the “tea” fragrance oils I’ve smelled are usually part of a blend like “green tea and pear”, so they aren’t well suited for creating your own tea blend around them.
Because this soap batter is on the softer side I’d recommend leaving the soap in the mould for three days and aging it for at least four weeks. I made mine before going away for a long weekend, so mine ended up sitting for 4.5 days before slicing! It was still perfectly workable, so don’t worry if you forget about it for a couple days.
The final bars are oh-so-pretty, smell divine, and are a wonderful addition to our Earl Grey theme. Let’s get soaping!
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Cream of Earl Grey Soap
25%Â refined coconut oil (USA / Canada)
20% beef tallow (wondering why?)
50%Â olive oil (pomace) (USA / Canada)
5%Â castor oil (USA / Canada)Calculate to 5% superfat
Per 500g oils:
- 2 tbsp white kaolin clay (USA / Canada)
- 7g | 0.25oz bergamot essential oil
- 14g | 0.49oz palmarosa essential oil
- 9g | 0.32oz benzoin resinoid
- Titanium dioxide, pre-dispersed in olive oil, as needed
- Whole black tea leaves, for the topping, as desired
- A warm mica or glitter, for the topping, as desired
Kick things off by calculating out your recipe for the amount of soap you’re making to get the finite amounts of the fats, lye, and water. Unsure about how to use SoapCalc? I made a video to walk you through it! Please ensure you’re familiar with standard soap making procedure before diving in (click that link if you aren’t!).
Prepare your mould—you’ll want a loaf mould for this soap. Melt your oils together in your soaping pot, and have a container with a pouring spout handy (I use these awesome funnel pitchers). Let your oils cool to slightly warmer than room temperature. Mix up your lye water and let that cool to about room temperature (you can use ice for part of your water to speed up the cooling process).
While everything is cooling, weigh out your essential oils, and measure out the clay. Blend the clay into the oils using your immersion blender; I find it’s helpful to stir a bit of oil into the clay first to create a thick paste and then blend that paste into the rest of the oils—having it in a smaller dish to start gives you more of an opportunity to bust up clumps.
Once the melted fats and lye water are just slightly warmer than room temperature, follow standard soap making procedure to bring them to trace. When you have a relatively thin trace, blend in the essential oils.
Now it’s time to divide up our batter! Pour about 10% of it into the small pitcher and leave the remaining batter in the pot. Add some titanium dioxide to the 10% and blend to combine—you just want enough to make it look milky.
Pour the 90% of the batter (the stuff without the titanium dioxide) into the mould, and then drizzle the titanium dioxide batter overtop. Using a gear tie that’s been twisted into a loop, create some twisty swirls in the top of the batter (watch the video to see what I did). Leave it to set up for about ten minutes before sculpting the top up into a bit of a mohawk. Sprinkle a few tea leaves down the centre and dust the loaf with glitter or mica.
Leave to saponify for 48–72 hours. Remove from the mould and slice (slice it from the side so you don’t drag tea leaves through the soap), and then leave to age for at least four weeks before using or gifting. Enjoy!
So nice to see a recipe with ingredients most soapers have on hand. Although its great to see your other recipes with more unusual ingredients I would have to specifically purchase those to just try your recipe. I do look forward to trying out this one. Love your newsletters 🙂
I’m definitely trying to balance creative ways to use more common ingredients and playing with new ones these days—there’s just so much to explore and learn and play with! It can be hard to keep my focus in any one place for very long 😛
Marie, I have just subscribed to you and have a question. I want to make your dishwashing paste but can’t find bioterge as40. I live in California usa I tried all the places you have listed and have had no luck. I have ordered the other ingredients from 3 different places. Why is this so hard to find and can a substitution be made?
thanks
From the recipe you mentioned: “You can use a different liquid anionic surfactant in place of the Bioterge AS40”. The substitutions list is always a good read 😉
Hi Marie!
Do you have another source of Benzoin that you recommend? With only ordering one item, I don’t have enough to have the $20 fee waived. BTW, I love your blog!
I believe Windy Point has it as well 🙂
Hi there! I see you add kaolin clay to most (if not all) of your soap recipes. Why is that? Is that to hold in the scent or give the bar a creamier texture? Thinking of adding kaolin clay to my next batch! Thanks!
Both! I love clay in my soap 😀 I suspect you will, too 🙂
Hi Marie, I love your site and have tried a few of your recipes with great success! In the middle of prepping for this soap, I realized 2 things: 1) I let the lye solution sit all day, like 12 hours, and now I’m concerned about if evaporation will be an issue. And 2) I didn’t buy enough of my essential oils (read the description too quickly), so I only have .33 oz each of bergamot and palmarosa. I am working with 907 grams of oils. Will the lye solution be ok to use? And will my soap be scentless if I use such a small amount of essential oils? I am tempted to throw in some cardamom, which I have on hand, since it would smell nice with the other two oils. Please let me know if you can help. Thank you!
Hey! I wouldn’t worry about the lye solution as long as you didn’t calculate you soap with a large water discount. You’ve basically just created a mild water discount, which is a thing people often do on purpose, ha. For the EOs; you’ve only got about 1/3 of what I’d recommend, so I would probably just leave them out. I don’t think much scent will carry through, so you’d probably end up feeling like you wasted them, which would be sad!
Hi Marie, I’m new to your blog and really enjoying looking around, especially at your yummy soap recipes! Just wondering, do you have a place that explains what benzoin resinoid and titanium dioxide (and other such ingredients) are for in a soap recipe?
Thanks!
Wendy
Hey Wendy! Typically the encyclopedia would be the place to go for that sort of thing, if the ingredient is in there (I’m working on it!) 🙂 Short answers: benzoin makes things smell like vanilla, TD makes things white 😉
Hi Marie! I’ve been planning an earl grey soap and look forward to trying your recipe. I will double the amount and I see you are using your eo blend at 6% of your total oils. I typically go for 3%, so isn’t this quite a high percentage rate? I don’t want to go above safe usage rates but also don’t want a soap with no scent. Thanks!
Hi Holly! This post definitely pre-dates my current understanding/knowledge of essential oil concentrations + safely; I would stick with safe usage rates and ignore past me if required 🙂