Christmas Cookie Soap (CPOP Process)

It’s Christmas time so it’s time to prepare some gifts for my family and friends. I can’t imagine a better gift than wonderful homemade soap. That’s what I am going to make in this video. For the first time I am going to try to use pigments in soap. I will use red, green and white pigments to make Christmas colored soap. The fragrance will be a Christmas cookie smell fragrance. This batch of handmade soap will be prepared using the CPOP process: Cold Process Oven Process. This soap making process is simple and combines the benefits of Hot Process soap making with the benefits of Cold Process soap making: the soap is ready to use right away and wonderful swirls can be created.

Click here to go to the recipe for this amazing soap.

Video transcript:

Hello ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Tony Needs Hobbies. My name is Tony and in this video I am going to show you how you can make some beautiful Christmas themed soap to serve as gifts during this holiday period for your family and friends. Have fun watching!

From the test batch you can see that the holiday theme is in the colors: the red, white and green. It smells like cookies, which is really awesome. I made a test batch to see if I’m able to work with pigments since I have never done that before. As you can see, it’s possible. The learnings from the test batch I will take with me during the preparation of the next batch.

For fats and oils, I’m going to use some castor oil, olive oil, beef tallow and coconut oil. I need sodium hydroxide, or lye, for the saponification. The cosmetics safe pigments that I will use are red iron oxide, green chromium oxide and white titanium dioxide. The latter will be dispersed in glycerin – which is not in the shot. The last ingredient is the Christmas cookie fragrance.

I’ll post all the ingredients and amounts, as well as the recipe for this batch on my website, see the link in the description.

The first thing that I’ll do is dispersing the colored pigments in a little bit of castor oil. The titanium dioxide will be dispersed in glycerin. I use one teaspoon of liquid and add half a teaspoon of pigment per 500 grams of soap. With a popsicle stick this will be mixed together thoroughly until all lumps are gone. Then these cups are set aside until they are needed later on in the process.

As mentioned in the intro, I have not used pigments yet, in my soap making experiments. All colors in previous batches have natural origins. In my first try, I used liquid colorant, which coagulated to form dark speckles. The black soap got its color from charcoal that was added. The color of this pale soap is the result of the oils that were used. The soap in the middle has coffee added to get exfoliating properties and color. The last one got its color from the freshly rendered lard that it was made from.

On to the next ingredients: the oils and fats. I will use 388 grams of olive oil, 157 grams of coconut oil and 426 grams of beef tallow. This will all be heated on a stove until it is all melted and has a temperature of 50 degrees Celsius. For the full recipe I refer you to the link to my website, that you can find in the description.

For the lye solution I’m going to add 135 grams of sodium hydroxide to 368 grams of distilled water. When making the lye solution, always add sodium hydroxide to water, don’t do it in the opposite order. It is important to work safe, use gloves, eye protection and wear something with long sleeves. Lye is dangerous and can cause chemical burns. Soap making is fun, but take the necessary precautions! After dissolving the solution will get very hot. Set it aside and let it cool down until it reaches the same temperature as the oils: 50 degrees Celsius.

For this batch of soap I am going to use the CPOP process. This stands for Cold Process Oven Process. It means the soap will be prepared following cold process guidelines. However, after molding, the soap will be popped in the oven to force it to go through gel phase.

The oven will be preheated to 75 degrees Celsius, the mold will be lined with parchment paper, or even better, freezer paper, if you have that at hand. Then, when all the ingredients have cooled down to approximately 50 degrees Celsius, it’s time to start the saponification. The lye will be added to the melted oils. Aided by using a stick blender, the mixture is emulsified until it reaches light trace: the stage where everything is emulsified and will not separate anymore. Then I add the Christmas cookie fragrance and mix that in well.

The batch is equally divided over three beakers: one for the red color, one for the green color and one for the white, which I will start with.

Since the mixture was blended until light trace, it is still reasonably thin. This means that when it is poured into the mold, it will generate a nice swirl effect of colors. After the molding, I use a bent skewer to add to this effect. Then, the soap is placed into the oven.

The soap is now in the oven where it is forced to go through gel phase. This will result in more vibrant colors. It might however also result in glycerin rivers. I’ll post an image of that later on in this video. Some people actively try to prevent glycerin rivers. I however don’t care so much about that.

Here you see three bars of soap, from left to right: hot process, CPOP process and cold process. As a byproduct of the soap reaction, glycerin forms. In case of hot process soap, this is mixed back into the mixture before molding. In case of cold process soap, it doesn’t separate out of the soap mixture. But in case of this CPOP soap, you can clearly see that the glycerin has separated from the soap and has formed pocketed translucent “rivers” between the different colors. This isn’t bad, I actually like the looks of it and as they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder…

The soap will be in the oven for about an hour after which I let it sit until the oven has cooled down. Then I’ll take it out, let it cure for about 24 hours and then I’ll cut it into nice bars.

After taking the parchment paper off, this big bar will be cut into more reasonably sized bars. Normally I cut 12 bars out of this block. To do this, I use this soap mold and cutter combo that I built in one of my other videos. Be sure to check that out by clicking the link in the top right corner.

Don’t forget that after cutting this soap is safe to be used right away, but it is still very soft and will not last long. It’s better to let it cure four to six weeks turning it over every day. Water will evaporate from the bar making it much harder and longer lasting in the shower.

Now take a look at how Christmassy these bars look!

I made these good looking Christmas themed bars of soap that smell absolutely wonderful and I had a great time doing it. If you have some tips for me regarding soap making, or my videos in general, drop me a comment in the comment section down below. And if you have enjoyed watching this video then let me know by hitting the like button and please also consider subscribing for more content like this in the future.

I want to wish you a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year and I would like to thank you for watching. Bye, bye!