Grrr. Fourth time the charm???
Kaolin clay will not give you a white bar of soap. It will turn your soap beige/tan/ivory/taupey the more you use. It is an awesome ingredient and I use it often, but it will turn your bars of soap not white!
To get a pristine bar of white soap, you will need to use titanium dioxide. If you use just oils to achieve your white bar of soap, it will be white, but it won’t be a pristine white bar of soap. May I ask you why you don’t want to use titanium dioxide?
Maddy is leaving out some very important details when she talks about a soap made with all coconut oil or a soap made with mostly coconut oil. Sure, that soap is overly energetic in it’s cleaning, but high percentages of coconut oil soap one needs to adjust the superfat to compensate for the coconut oil in soap being to cleansing.
Let’s say you take a soap recipe like Marie’s standard bar of soap and run it through soapcalc. It will give you a superfat at 5%. That’s a great recipe! But if you suffer from dry skin, 5% will seem overly cleansing and drying too. So you up it to 8%. Coconut oil soap or high percentage of coconut oil soap is the same way. If you adjust the superfat in the recipe, your soap will be amazing and wonderful! But if you leave the superfat at the default (5%) you’re skin will be stripped of everything, leaving you with very dry and in pain skin.
My go to recipe for a high percentage of coconut oil soap:
80% coconut oil
20% shea butter or Lard (I love lard in my soap)
Water Discount: 35%
Liquid: coconut milk
Superfat: 30%
Fragrance: optional
Both the shea and lard soap fly off the shelves as soon as it is ready.
Belinda is correct in saying lighter coloured soaps will result in lighter coloured soaps. And if you are planning on using fragrance oils, be very careful and pay attention to the vanilla content. The larger the vanilla content, the more discoloured you are going to go!
