Used the same basic soap recipe as Olive Oil Soap (Recipe 2), but omitted the oatmeal and lavender. Instead, collected zest from two lemons and spread the zest out to dry for several hours. When dry, crumbled the zest further using fingers. Instead of tap water, this time used cold Brita water.
70% olive oil (11.2 oz)
25% coconut oil (4 oz)
5% crisco (0.8 oz)
2.2 oz lye
6.1 oz water (Brita filtered, cold), Note: this mixture reached a temperature exceeding 130F, but temperature dropped fairly quickly.
Oil mixture reached 140F and was taking a long time to drop. Filled sink with cold water and rested pan with oils in sink. This was very effective.
Revelation! Without the lavender and oatmeal, the solution remained a pale yellow and emulsified well. Mental note to add lavender and oatmeal at trace step in the future instead of adding to hot oils.
At thin trace (since this soap is heavily olive oil, it took forever to mix), added:
citrus zest
0.5 oz lemon essential oil
The lemon essential oil itself is yellow so may also impart a slight yellow coloring. This is nice. Next time, may use zest from 3-4 lemons instead of 2. Also, lemongrass essential oil is far cheaper than lemon, and apparently fixes in cold process soap very well so use that when this lemon oil runs out.
After adding the essential oil, noted that the mixture seemed to thin out a bit and required maybe another hour of on and off stirring before getting thicker. Lemon scent is detectable one day later and soap is a pale yellow color (pretty!)
Update: two days in and the lemon scent is a great deal less detectable. Aiiiieeeee!!
Update: six days later I turned it out and started cutting but it is still a tad too soft to make perfectly clean cuts. I think with this basic soap recipe you always need to wait about a week. The lemon scent is definitely still there though and it's a lovely light yellow color. I really can't wait to use this soap!
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