Lemongrass Jasmine Green Tea Soap

This weekend I’ve combined some of my very favorite fragrances for a fresh, invigorating soap: lemongrass and tea. I’ve chosen Jasmine green tea because of the wonderful scent and I thought it would go well with lemongrass.

For this soap recipe, I used organic lemongrass essential oil, not fragrance oil, which is stronger scented and retains a lot of skin care benefits, acting as a stimulant and treating inflamed skin. I got mine at Wellington, because I always love their oils. For this batch, I used only one ounce, and it goes a long way! It still came out stronger than most of my soaps with double the amount of fragrance oils.

I also added dry tea leaves into the mix, because it adds a nice bit of texture to the batch. Here is the full list of ingredients, I kept it simple and used pure coconut oil as the one and only oil, and before you say that this doesn’t work on your soap calculator, read about my pure coconut oil soap recipe that defies calculations because it’s superfatted. Trust me, I’ve used this method hundreds of times, selling the soaps in my Etsy shop and using them at home!

Supplies

• 29 oz coconut oil (the kind with a 76° F melting point)
• 3.8 oz lye
• 10 oz water
• 1 oz lemongrass essential oil
• 2 oz strongly steeped tea
• 1 small tea bag’s worth of loose leaf tea

Steps:

1. Wearing plastic gloves and goggles and being careful not to get skin contact with the lye, measure the lye in a container.
2. Measure the water in a separate Pyrex bowl and set aside.
3. Still wearing protective gear, slowly add the lye to the water while stirring. Never pour the water into the lye!
4. Let the water/lye mixture cool for about 15 minutes.
5. Melt the coconut oil and place in a mixing bowl, I usually put the coconut oil jar into the microwave for a minute to melt it and use a Kitchen-aid with a whisk for my soap mixing.
6. Start mixing the coconut oil and slowly pour the lye mixture in the oil while mixing.
7. Add the fragrance oil, tea, and tea leaves, and keep mixing.
8. Mix until it forms a nice trace.  A good soap “trace” means that the oil and lye have successfully mixed and the mixture will look like pudding with no evidence of separation.  In the Kitchen-aid, this takes about 45 minutes on medium for a very good trace.
9. Pour the mixture into a soap mold.  I love using a silicone soap mold because the soap comes out easily after it has hardened.
10. 16 to 24 hours later, check the soap to see if it is cool and hard enough to cut. You don’t want to wait too long or it will be too hard to cut, yet you don’t want to cut it too early while it is still soft in the middle. This part is tricky, as cutting times can vary based on how the soap turned out, and dependent on the humidity and temperature of your house.
11. If it appears to be ready, go ahead and cut your soap. My favorite tool for cutting is the Multi-Bar Cutter from Bramble Berry. It is a bit expensive, though, so if you don’t make soaps all the time like I do, then a smaller cutter works just fine.
12. Let your soap sit for about a week to let it harden.

I love how it’s spotted with the wonderful black tea leaves.

For my shop, I wrap these in beautiful 6″x6″ washi paper and then secure with a label, and they come out wonderfully!