Avocado-Coconut Milk Soap

So, there I was perusing my copy of Soap Crafting, looking for inspiration, when a project called "Avocado Moisturizing Bars" caught my eye. I've wanted to try avocado in soap for a while and this recipe sounded intriguing.

I wanted a palm-free recipe, though, so I went in search of such on the interwebs. And I found this Sea Clay Avocado Facial Bar recipe on the Soap Queen blog, guest-written by Amanda from Lovin' Soap. Bingo. An avocado theme, lots of avocado oil, and no palm oil. I omitted the sea clay, but otherwise followed her recipe.

And then I remembered that I had bought some coconut milk a few months ago, vowing to use it in a batch of soap. This would be the perfect time to make good on that promise to myself.

Avocado plus coconut milk should equal mad luxury.

So, I ended up sort of combining Amanda's recipe with Anne-Marie's technique, adding my own touches along the way.

Anne-Marie's project in her Soap Crafting book is a gradient soap. I wasn't feeling up to a gradient, so I opted to do a single pour.

But! Wouldn't a droplet swirl be a pretty way to jazz things up? And what if the soap used for the droplets was colored with activated charcoal! The black and green would look stunning together, and the charcoal would up the spa-like factor.

So much luxury. I hope everyone can handle it.

And so, here's how the recipe I ended up with looks:

Of course, if you use this or any recipe you find on the web or in a book, please run it through a lye calculator to double-check it! Typos happen!

You may notice that I have listed the coconut milk and water separately. That's because I replaced two ounces of my coconut milk with water for my avocado puree. (More on that in a sec.) The full liquid amount recommended for the entire recipe is 12.160 ounces (345g).

For the scent, I chose Bramble Berry's Wasabi fragrance oil, which is also the FO Anne-Marie uses for her avocado soap project. I love the Wasabi FO! It smells to me like freshly-cut grass with notes of peppermint and ginger. I thought that the bright, green scent would go perfectly with the avocado theme. The Wasabi FO sticks like crazy, too, and it behaves well in cold process soap.

I also added some sodium lactate at 1.5%, which worked out to about 1 1/2 teaspoons per pound of oils, to help create harder bars.

So how do you get the avocado into the soap? After slicing and measuring out 2 ounces of avocado (that's one ounce per pound of oils), I subtracted 2 ounces of liquid from my coconut milk and replaced it with distilled water so I could make a slurry of pureed avocado, as Anne-Marie suggests in her recipe. I suppose I could have just used 2 ounces of coconut milk pulled from my total, but the coconut milk was frozen. (To keep my temps low and to prevent the lye from scorching the coconut milk, I measured the milk and then froze it ahead of time.)

To make the slurry, I added two ounces of water to the avocado and then pureed it with the stickblender until smooth.

Using fresh fruits and vegetables in soap can potentially affect its shelf-life, so it's important to fully puree fruits and veggies because larger pieces or chunks can go bad and get moldy. It's probably best to use bars containing food ingredients within a year or so for optimal freshness.

Once my oils and lye solution were cooled to around 90-95 degrees F, I added the avocado slurry to the oils and stickblended the mixture to get the avocado really well incorporated. Then I stirred in my fragrance oil and added the coconut milk-lye solution. Once the soap was at a light trace, I separated out about one cup and colored it with activated charcoal. I colored the rest of the soap batter with Green Chrome oxide.

Something I seem afflicted with lately is overmixing my soap batter. It seems that I get to a nice trace and then hit the soap one last time with the stickblender, just for good measure, I guess? I did that with my Honeysuckle Mantra Swirl soap and I did it again here. This time, I had a light trace - which was what I wanted - but then after I added the colorants, I stickblended briefly just to mix them in well. I should have just stuck with the whisk because my soap was a tiny bit thicker than I would have liked. The soap was still very manageable, but I wanted a lighter trace for swirling. I have to learn to stop myself when I get that urge to mix things one more time.

I poured the green soap into the mold and then drizzled the black soap onto the green from up high so it would penetrate into the loaf. Looking back at the video, though, I don't think I poured from high enough. That plus the slightly thick trace made for less dramatic droplet swirls. Oh, well, the soap is still pretty!

After pouring the soap, I stuck it in the freezer overnight to prevent gel phase because there is a risk that the avocado could turn brown if the soap gets too hot. I also used a thin plastic loaf mold - I didn't want anything insulated (like a wooden mold) that would retain heat.

Here's that video I mentioned showing how I made this soap:


I am very pleased with how the soap turned out! The ingredients are luxurious, and the Wasabi scent is amazing! Overall, I like the droplet swirls and the texturing on the tops. I've tested an end piece, and, boy howdy, is it nice.

Have you ever tried avocado in soap? Coconut milk? How did you like it?