Wheat Germ Oil Soap

Wheat Germ Oil is a marvelous oil for skin care. I’ve trotted it out in lotion, salve, and lip balm. Those products have all turned out quite nicely, so I decided to give Wheat Germ Oil a go in a soap.

It’ll be a few weeks before I can test how it feels to use the soap, but I was happy with the results as I made it.

Another factor was that I poured out a small bowl of Wheat Germ Oil to use in a photo and realized I was going to have a terrible time pouring it back into the small holes I poked in the bottle’s seal. So I weighed what I had out, and it was enough to make soap. Win!

Join me in the workroom.

What You’ll Need

Instructions

Before getting started, please prepare to soap safely! Long sleeves, gloves, eye protection, and close-toed shoes are a must. If you have never made cold process soap before, we’re glad you’re here! Please check out this blog post, which is the first in a series on beginning soapmaking.

Weigh all the oils into a microwave-safe container; set aside.

Weigh the fragrance oil into a small glass container; set aside.

Weigh the lye.

Weigh the water.

Slowly add the lye to the water, stirring. Do this in a well-ventilated area. It will give off toxic fumes that you do not want to inhale. Once the lye is completely dissolved, set the mixture aside to cool.

Oils before melting.

Starting to stick blend the lye solution into melted oils.

Pouring in Butter Toffee Fragrance Oil.

Stirring in the Butter Toffee Fragrance Oil, which turned the soap batter a yellowish color.

Pop the oils into the microwave to melt, using 30-second increments. Once they are completely liquid, set them aside to cool.

Here is your break to clean up your work space, set out the mold you will use, visit the rest room. Once the oils and the lye mixture are within 10 degrees of each other and have cooled to about 100ºF, you’re ready to make soap.

Stir Sodium Hydroxide into cooled lye solution.

Carefully pour the lye mixture into the oils, taking care not to splash. Stir with your stick blender, then pulse the stick blender several times to emulsify the soap batter.

Once I like the texture of the soap batter, I remove my stick blender and hand-stir the fragrance oil into the batter.

Carefully pour the soap batter into the mold; I used our Heart Silicone Mold for this batch of soap. Set the mold in a warm place where it will not be disturbed and allow the soap to saponify for at least 12 hours. You can put your soap into a warmed oven to process. You do this by preheating the oven to 170ºF then turning it off. Cover the mold with plastic wrap and place it in the warmed oven and leave for 12 hours.

When soap is sufficiently hardened, unmold and set aside to cure for 6-8 weeks. Don’t forget to use Cure Cards so you remember the date and so you can determine when the soap has completely cured.

Pouring soap into the mold.

A one-pound batch fits neatly into our Heart Silicone Mold.

Notes

The Butter Toffee Fragrance Oil causes the soap batter to discolor. Upon unmolding the soap, I noticed that the soap was starting to discolor around the edge. It will continue to darken due to the vanillin content in the fragrance oil.

I put the soap in the oven overnight to process. It popped out of the mold beautifully the next morning.

Our heart mold holds a one-pound batch exactly, so you can make 6 generously sized soaps in one go.