Making coffee soap takes one extra step that I find bothersome, but I believe it is worth the trouble because people go gaga over these bars.
Here is the recipe- remember I weigh everything out in grams.
- Coconut oil 76 degree-1060 grams
- Palm oil-932 grams
- Beeswax-70 grams
- Olive oil -1410 grams
- Cocoa Butter- 100 grams
- 80 grams or so of orange peel at trace- I order this from Aquarius Aromatherapy
- 1 cup of dry coffee grounds at trace
- clove essential oil-54 grams
- peppermint essential oil-80 grams
- distilled water made into coffee-1358 grams
- lye-486 grams
The first thing to do when you are making coffee bars is to take the distilled water and boil it up to make up some nice dark coffee. I weigh it out to make 1358 grams of hot coffee in my Bodum- and then pour it into my special lye/water container(rubber maid juice pitcher with a lid). This usually takes two or three Bodums full depending on the size of your little coffee press. Add 20 grams of white sugar and 10 grams of salt to the hot coffee, stir well and set aside until room temperature. Adding sugar to your soap recipe helps to increase lather. Salt is also helpful to increase hardness. I don’t recall why I started doing this for these bars but I always have. After this one step, you can proceed with regular soap making instructions. I usually set the lye water/ coffee container in a pan of cold water while I am adding the lye in case it overheats. I usually do this outside or in a well-ventilated space as the coffee and lye solution is quite smelly. Melt your solid butters and oils and beeswax as usual-set aside until the correct temp. is reached. Begin stirring everything together once you reach the temperature of 100 degrees. At trace, stir in the coffee grounds, orange peel, and essential oils and pour into molds. Insulate 24 hours or so. The next day, set them in the freezer for a few hours to help remove them from your molds. Remember how I told you in a previous post how I hated using pvc pipes to make round bars? This batch is the reason why. It came pouring out the bottom one evening when I was making soap late at night. I screamed, “Help!” to no one in particular. Funny now, not so funny then.
Pictured here is a bag of locally roasted coffee that my sister gave me. I didn’t use it in this batch of coffee soap. I drank it before I made the soap. I used a cheaper brand for making the batch because that’s the way I am.
These bars are excellent for removing grease from hands. It is also excellent at getting rid of garlic fingers- although some people love the scent of garlic on their skin. People tell me all kinds of things at farmers markets… you would be surprised. I suppose if you are a dentist or some other profession where your hands are in people mouths you might be conscious of strong scents that cling. The orange peel and coffee grounds are the reason that it is so good at cleaning kitchen hands. I like to call this batch Kitchen Goddess, but I also call it Kitchen God depending on who is using it. I use a combination of Clove and Peppermint essential oils because these oils have amazing antiseptic properties- naturally.
Wash Rinse Repeat 