Shea & Cocoa Butter Bar — Unscented

Safety: glasses and gloves before lye · lye into water, never the reverse · ventilate · soap-only equipment · raw batter is caustic until cured.

Two Brambleberry 6-Cavity Ovals — Cold Process

Batch #7 — Ready

Mold: two Brambleberry 6-Cavity Oval molds, poured as one batch (3.5" × 2.5" × 1" per cavity) Yield: 12 bars | Cure: 6–8 weeks (4 minimum) | Active: ~1 hour Basis: a new line — the first batch with shea and cocoa butter, the first with no fragrance, and the first poured across both oval molds. A bath bar that also works at the sink Safety: glasses and gloves on before touching lye · lye into water, never the reverse · ventilate · soap-only equipment

Recipe

7% superfat — a point above the hand bar, for the mildest bar in the archive; the hard butters offset the softness a higher superfat usually costs. Blend 45% olive / 20% coconut / 15% shea / 10% cocoa butter / 10% castor: olive drops below the 62% house floor to make room for 25% butters, coconut stays inside its 18–28% rail, and castor stays pinned at 10%. No fragrance, so nothing browns and nothing accelerates. Fills both ovals to 94.0% — 12 bars.

SoapCalc entries for the cross-check: Olive Oil 45% · Coconut Oil, 76 deg 20% · Shea Butter 15% (not "Shea Oil, fractionated") · Cocoa Butter 10% · Castor Oil 10% — 1071g oils, 7% superfat, water as 38% of oils. The calculator gives 142.85g before rounding.

Lye confirmed on SoapCalc: 142.85g on 2026-10-09, rounded to 143g.

Instructions

Step 1 — Gear Up

Glasses and gloves on. Ventilation on. Pre-weigh every ingredient into its own container before anything is combined. There is no fragrance to stage.

Step 2 — Prep the Molds

Set both oval molds side by side on a flat surface. No prep.

Step 3 — Lye Solution (make it first — it needs ~30 min to cool)

1. Weigh 407g distilled water into the 2qt stainless bowl
2. Weigh 143g lye separately
3. Pour lye into water — never the reverse. Stir until clear; it heats to ~185°F and gives off brief fumes. Don't lean over it
4. Set it aside to cool to 110–120°F
5. Stir 12ml sodium lactate into the cooled solution

Step 4 — Butters, Oils, Clay

1. Melt 107g cocoa butter, 161g shea butter and 214g coconut oil together in the 6qt stockpot on the induction element, on low, until completely clear — no specks left
2. Take the pot off the heat and add 482g olive and 107g castor
3. Stick-blend 21g kaolin clay straight into the combined oils until smooth — no slurry cup
4. Bring the oils to 110–120°F, within ~10°F of the lye solution. Stay in the upper half of the usual window: cocoa butter starts to set below ~95°F, and a cooling pot thickens into a false trace

Step 5 — Combine and Trace

1. Pour the cooled lye solution into the stockpot — blend in place, no transfer
2. Stick-blend in 5–10 second bursts, alternating with hand stirring, until light trace (the batter thickens just enough to leave a faint trail off the blender)
3. The butters bring trace on sooner than the high-olive blends, so don't over-blend. Stop at light trace and go straight to the pour — there are 12 cavities to fill

Step 6 — Fragrance

None. The only scent in this bar is the cocoa butter.

Step 7 — Pour, Spritz, Rest (24–48h in mold)

1. Pour evenly into the 12 cavities, alternating between the two molds so neither is filled from the thickened bottom of the pot; tap each mold to release bubbles; smooth the tops
2. Spritz the tops with 99% isopropyl alcohol to prevent soda ash
3. Bridge cardboard over both molds on risers so nothing touches the soap — individual cavities cool fast, and the cover keeps gel even
4. Leave undisturbed 24–48 hours (a few days is fine)

Step 8 — Unmold

1. Wait until the bars are firm and not sticky. Give them more time if they're soft
2. Flex the silicone and pop each bar out
3. No cutting — bars are individually molded. The cure clock starts at the unmold, so write the date down

Step 9 — Cure (6–8 weeks)

1. Rack the bars with airflow on all sides; cool, dry, out of direct sun
2. 4 weeks minimum; 6–8 is better. A 7% superfat bar keeps getting milder and harder with time, and this batch is in no hurry
3. Label with the batch number and the unmold date

Batch Notes

Outcome

• Poured 2026-10-20, ~5pm EST, as written — no changes to the oils, lye, water, or additives reported. Unscented, so no fragrance ledger debit.
• Fill: the batch did not fit. The calculator put it at 94.0% across both ovals, but every cavity was poured slowly to the brim — just short of spilling — and a fair amount of batter was still left over. The leftover was not weighed. Measured afterward (2026-10-22): one cavity holds 120g of water filled very full, perhaps a couple of grams more at the true brim — against the 143.4 ml per cavity the mold entry assumes. The calculator was working from cavities about a fifth larger than they are.
• Trace: stick-blended until the batter looked like melted chocolate or thin pudding, then poured — a light-to-medium trace by the usual description.
• Spritz: 90% isopropyl, not the 99% the method calls for. No soda ash visible at unmold, though on a bar this pale light ash would be hard to see.
• Scent: a strong cocoa smell for the first ~18–24 hours, gone by unmold. The question for the cure retro is whether any comes back once the bars dry out, or whether unrefined cocoa butter at 10% simply doesn't carry through saponification.
• Correction (2026-10-22): the fill. The mold entry has since been corrected to the measured 120 mL per cavity (1440 mL for both molds). Against that, this batch comes to 112.3% — the calculator now agrees with the leftover batter. The 94.0% in the recipe above is what the batch was planned at; the lye is unaffected.
• Unmolded 2026-10-22, ~10am EST — about 41 hours in the mold. All 12 bars released cleanly, with no freezer, and kept crisp edges. Batch #5 (62% olive, no butters) came out misshapen from this mold when forced out before it had firmed, even after more than 48 hours; the 25% butters plus sodium lactate are the likely difference. First batch poured across both oval molds — both released the same.
• Cure clock started 2026-10-22. Earliest usable 2026-11-19 (4 weeks); fuller cure 2026-12-03 to 2026-12-17 (6–8 weeks).
• When cured: a cured retro for the verdict — hardness against the house body bar, lather (the butters should make it creamier, not bubblier), skin feel at 7% superfat, color, and whether any cocoa scent survived the cure.