I have always wanted to make whipped soap, also known as Floap. It floats in the bathtub, looks like whipped cream, can be piped like frosting, and it’s not something we’ve ever done before! I must say, there are quite a few things I’ll do differently next time, but I’m still thrilled with how this soap turned out.
Because whipped soap has so much air in it, you need to use lots of hard oils so it will last in your shower. The original recipe I found called for extra palm and some tallow, but I chose to add in cocoa butter in place of the tallow and part of the palm oil. It turned out great! However, I decided that I could whip the oils by hand without a mixer (which I didn’t have at the time, and I really wanted to make Floap right then). I thought to myself “I make whipped cream by hand all the time; I don’t need no electric mixer!” That was a big mistake. I don’t think I got the soap whipped up enough to really be light and fluffy, but it’s still gorgeous!
Now, I was warned that whipped soap doesn’t take color very well, so you either have to be happy with pastels, or be willing to over-color your batter. But, because I didn’t get the whipped volume I was expecting, I just over-colored regular soap and I’m expecting these bars to lather green. While this is appropriate for St. Patrick’s day (my inspiration for this to begin with) it’s not what I wanted.
I also made a classic error I always warn my students about: I didn’t do a background check on my fragrance, so I didn’t know that it would rice on me! I was able to smooth it back out, but I think using the Fresh Bamboo Fragrance Oil really killed the fluff in the soap. Next time, I’ll be sure to double check that I’m working with something that plays well with CP soap.
Enough of my mistakes; on to the project!
Note: We actually had some feedback on this recipe and found that it fills one of the 10″ silicone molds as well as the 5 lb Mold with Sliding Bottom, so be prepared to have an extra mold on hand!
Recipe
12 oz Cocoa Butter
12 oz Coconut Oil
15 oz Palm Oil
7.2 oz Olive Oil
2.4 oz Castor Oil
6.9 oz Sodium Hydroxide (Lye)
18.4 Distilled Water
1 teaspoon Hydrated Chrome Green
1 teaspoon Green Chrome Oxide
1 teaspoon Yellow Lip Safe Mica
4.4 oz Fragrance Oil
Click here to add everything you need for this project to your Bramble Berry shopping cart! Don’t forget to add a fragrance oil.
Safety alert! Be sure you’ve got gloves, goggles, long sleeves and pants, and closed toed shoes! Be familiar with all lye safety techniques before you start by reviewing this free video on lye safety from Soap Queen TV.
ONE: Melt down hard oils, and whip to a creamy consistency. Cocoa butter can actually crystallize if you melt it down all the way, so I added it to my warm hard oils and used my stick-blender to puree it in. This took quite a longer then I was expecting, and I think that next time I will just temper the cocoa butter and add it in liquid. Whip until the oils are a fluffy, almost meringue consistency.
TWO: Add in your softer oils (olive and castor) while continuing to whip the hard oils. Your fluffy consistency will fall at first, but keep whipping and you should get back to that whipped meringue stage.
THREE: Make your lye water, and let it cool down. A lot. We have a dedicated freezer for lye water and soap, so I kept my lye in there until it was 92 degrees. Add the lye slowly (about 1 oz at a time) to your whipped oils, and continue to whip. Do so carefully, to make sure you don’t splash any lye or caustic soap. I ultimately had to transfer my whipped oils to a large stainless steel pot to have enough space to whip safely.
FOUR: Add fragrance! Some fragrances may cause the whip to fall a little, but just whip it back up. (At this point, my arm was getting pretty tired. Do yourself a favor: use an electric mixer.)
FIVE: Separate and color! I pre-mixed my colors in olive oil so they didn’t clump or speckle. I used 1 tsp each of hydrated chrome green, chrome green and yellow mica.
SIX: Glop into layers. Your soap should be the consistency of whipped cream or a fluffy meringue. I pulled the soap side to side first with a spatula, spaced about an inch apart. Then I dragged a thick spatula the length of the mold for a little bit of a swirl; this shows as a neat vertical line in the middle of the bars. You can pipe extra soap onto the top for texture, or just glop it with your spatula like I did.
SEVEN: Your soap will harden up very quickly because of all the solid oils. So, depending on the kind of mold you used and how fast yours sets up, be prepared to cut your soap withing 4 hours or it may crumble. I cut mine the next morning (about 8 hours), and some of my frosting on top crumbled off.
Here’s a close-up of it in the mold. This was 4 hours after pouring, and you can see how hard it already is!
The verdict: I really want to take another shot at this technique, this time with some mechanical help. This soap doesn’t float at all, which is a big indicator that I didn’t get enough air whipped into my batter. And while it does lather a bit green, it leaves my skin feeling great, so I’m still going to call this experiment a win.
![corner3[1]](https://www.soapqueen.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/corner31-120x120.jpg)
![m&p20Color20wall1[1]](https://www.soapqueen.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/mp20Color20wall11-120x120.jpg)
![FO[1]](https://www.soapqueen.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/FO1-120x120.jpg)
Heya i am for the first time here. I came across this
board and I find It truly useful & it helped me out
much. I hope to give something back and help others like you
helped me.
Hi there!
I’m so glad you have found this blog helpful. Thanks for being a reader! 🙂
-Amanda with Bramble Berry
All my oils whip perfectly until I add my lye mixture then I cannot get peaks to form to be able to pipe out the soap. My liquids are actually made cooler each time as I try again and again. I’ve tried goat milk and water. What am I doing wrong?
Oh don’t I know this problem! You’re using a stand mixer, right? Those are key to making whipped soap that really has high peaks and gorgeous texture. You have to add the lye mixture extremely slowly (a little bit at a time) and then whip, whip, whip, whip longer and longer until you get the peaks. Then, you add the fragrance in (again, slowly) and whip until the peaks stick around. When I was doing the photo shoot for the cupcakes in my book, I thought the frosting would never peak – it was a lot of pressure with the photographer & art director just standing there, staring at it and me! =)
I have been wanting to try this for a while, and I finally did it! I don’t use palm oil so I created my own recipe with the same basic ingredients minus palm, more cocoa butter (about 50%) and a little shea butter too. I cooled it way down to around 75 degrees since I do my mixing in a garage that’s hot hot hot. Everything went fine – the biggest surprise is that it took FOREVER to set up! It took 30-45 minutes before the soap would hold its shape to make peaks on top.
This was just my test batch, now I’m going to use it as the ‘foam’ layer on latte soaps!
Hi Susan!
Thank you so much for your feedback on this tutorial! We just love hearing how our recipes work for our customers. You’ll have to let us know how your foam latte soaps turn out and if you get any pictures, we’d love to see them on Bramble Berry’s Facebook page. =)
Happy Soaping!
-Becky with Bramble Berry
https://www.facebook.com/BrambleBerry
I’m going to attempt this recipe this weekend, but I’m a little confused… The mold used says it holds 50 ounces. But the recipe adds up to almost 80. Plus with whipping I would assume it would take up even more space. Can you help me understand this? I would use either two smaller loaf molds or my 5lb wood loaf. I just want to be prepared for how much soap I’ll actually need to mold!
Hi Meagan!
Thanks for the eagle eye! We’re going to follow up with Otion, since this is their recipe, and see what they say. 🙂
-Becky with Bramble Berry
Hi Meagan!
Thank you so much for your patience! I was actually able to speak to Otion and I figured that they forgot to mention that this particular recipe will make enough soap for one of the 10″ silicone loaf molds as well as the 5 lb wooden loaf mold!
10″ Silicone Loaf Mold: https://www.brambleberry.com/10-Silicone-Loaf-Mold–P5199.aspx
You are definitely going to have a lot of soap when you create this particular recipe, so I wanted you to be prepared. Let us know how yours turns out, if you get any pictures, you can share them on Bramble Berry’s Facebook page.
-Becky with Bramble Berry
https://www.facebook.com/BrambleBerry
I just read this blog a few days ago and tonight I think I may have unintentionally made whipped soap! About one minute into mixing my lye and oils together my hand blender blew up. I thought about getting the bowl mixer out, but it was so much easier to grab the stick blender, which I’ve never used for soap making before.
Within minutes my oils and lye were the consistency of this gloopy custard. I thought about discarding it, but remembered this blog. I was planning on testing out the coat hanger swirl technique, so had two colors ready to go. Instead, I’ve just lumped them all into the mould together.
Fingers crossed it works out, I’ve been racking my brain to see if I have missed a vital ingredient, but pretty sure I haven’t. Do oils and lye generally mix quite quickly with a stick blender? With the hand held blender I usually mix it for 20 minutes to get to a light trace.
Would love to know which sort of blender everyone is using and for how long. My recipe contained the below quantities:
600gr olive oil
300gr palm oil
300 gr coconut oil
75gr macadamia oil
178gr sodium hydroxide
420 gr distilled water
16 gr vanilla FO (which disclosures to chocolate)
16 gr sandlewood FO(which I hope stays white)
Thanks
Liz
Hi Liz!
With a stick blender, the oils and butters (when mixed with the lye water) actually don’t take too long to get to trace. I can definitely see how this would be a surprise to you when you’ve been used to working at 20 minutes just to get light trace. That sounds like a very lovely recipe and I can’t wait to hear more about how it turns out when it has hardened. If you get any pictures, be sure to share them with us on Bramble Berry’s Facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/BrambleBerry
Happy Soaping!
-Becky with Bramble Berry
Your experience has encouraged me to try whipped soap! I have read your blog posts on your whipped soap adventures and appreciate that even a pro like yourself is always learning. I am grateful for people who are willing to be open with their mistakes so that others can learn from them :-). Thank you!
Annie (aka Anna Marie 🙂
Hi Annie!
We are so excited that you are going to be trying this recipe out. You’ll have to keep us updated on your progress and we’d love to see any pictures that you get on Bramble Berry’s Facebook page. Do you have any color schemes or fragrance blends planned yet? =)
Happy Soaping!
-Becky with Bramble Berry
https://www.facebook.com/BrambleBerry
Could the oils just be combined with the lye and then whipped?
Hi Julia!
The reason why we melt down the oils first and whip them is to get that extra fluffy whipped soap. If you combine the oils and lye and then whip, you won’t have as long to whip them together before the soap starts to setup because of all those solid oils in it. I hope this helps! =)
-Becky with Bramble Berry
Love the colors. I’ve often wondered how people got that look. I’ve tried a thick trace, but it still doesn’t look right. I will have to get out my mixer. One question, do you cure for the normal 6 weeks or is it less with all the air whipped in?
Hi Shelia!
Just like any other cold process recipe, you are going to still want to let this soap cure a full 4-6 weeks. The longer you let it cure, the harder (and more long lasting) it will be. I hope this helps! Keep us updated on your progress and if you get any pictures of your whipped soap we would love to see them on Bramble Berry’s Facebook page. =)
Happy Soaping!
-Becky with Bramble Berry
https://www.facebook.com/BrambleBerry
This looks like a really fun soap to make.
Question: I ran this through BB Lye calculator at 5% superfat and the lye calculation works out correctly, however the liquid comes to 16.04 oz instead of 18.4 oz in the recipe. Is the extra 2.36 oz because this is a whipped soap?
Thanks!
Hi Sly!
The extra water actually adds to the lightness and texture of the whipped soap in this particular recipe. The more water you add, the lighter your soap will be. Otion added a couple of extra ounces to their recipe because they really wanted it to be super light and float in the bathtub. I hope this helps! =)
-Becky with Bramble Berry
Thanks Becky!!
I always learn something from you & I really appreciate it!!
Love what you’ve made it looks great, I love that you get such a pure white with this soap. I have been making this soap for some time and found that as long as you cut with wire the next day it is usually fine, don’t use a knife it does crumble really badly.
Hi Annette!
We are so glad you’ve tried out the whipped soap technique before and found that it works for you. =) If you have any pictures of your whipped soap, we’d love to see what it looks like! You can share pictures with us on Bramble Berry’s Facebook page. Thanks for the tip about cutting, that’s a great one to remember. =)
Happy Soaping!
-Becky with Bramble Berry
https://www.facebook.com/BrambleBerry
O’ I absolutely LOVE this technique. I’ve always wondered how people made soap like that.(funny thing I have made soap like that just not with those colors..LoL)
Thanks for sharing the Otion’s Whipped Soap!
Hi Pam!
Isn’t this such a fun technique? We hope you get a chance to try it out! =)
-Becky with Bramble Berry
LOVE your colors…I would also call this soap a win. 🙂
I made whipped soap once and I keep saying I need to do it again, thanks for the inspiration.
Hi Stacie!
We absolutely loved Otion’s whipped soap and hope that all of our customers get a chance to try this recipe out. If you do make whipped soap again, be sure to let us know how it turned out. =)
Happy Soaping!
-Becky with Bramble Berry