Adding fruit, typically in a puree form, to your soap can incorporate its properties and natural colors. Based on the provided reference, a common method involves creating a blend of the fruit puree with a portion of your soap-making oils before combining it with the main batch.
Here's how to incorporate fruit puree into your soap mixture according to the steps provided:
Method for Adding Fruit Puree
Incorporating fruit puree requires careful integration into the soap-making process, specifically before the chemical reaction of saponification begins. This often helps protect the delicate fruit material from the initial high heat of the lye solution.
Here are the steps:
- Measure Oils: Start by accurately measuring all the oils required for your soap recipe.
- Mix Lye Solution: Prepare your lye solution according to your recipe, ensuring it is fully dissolved and beginning to cool if necessary. Handle lye with extreme caution.
- Create Puree Slurry: Pour off a few ounces of your measured oils into a separate container. Blend this small portion of oil with your fruit puree to create a smooth, consistent "puree slurry." This pre-mix helps the fruit integrate more easily and evenly into the larger batch of oils.
- Add Slurry to Main Oils: Add the puree slurry you just created to your main batch of oils before introducing the lye solution. This ensures the fruit puree is dispersed throughout the oils from the beginning.
- Proceed with Lye Addition: Once the slurry is fully mixed into the bulk of your oils, you can then safely add your lye solution while stirring, initiating the saponification process that turns oils and lye into soap.
This method ensures the fruit puree is well-dispersed within the oils before the saponification reaction occurs, which can generate significant heat.
By following these steps, you can effectively introduce fruit ingredients like purees into your handmade soap, integrating them smoothly into your base oils using a simple slurry technique before the main lye addition.
