Do you recommend superfatting? If so can you use plain butter?

Here is the answer to your next soap making question.

I do recommend superfatting, if you don't superfat your soaps they can be a bit astringent (drying) to the skin, in fact if you want a luxury soap? superfatting is the only way to go.

...only don't use plain butter!

I'm assuming you will be making the soap yourself and using the cold process (the combination of oils and lye), in which case you calculate the quantity of fats required, decide which of the fats will be used to superfat, an example...

Say you plan to make a soap with the following:

40% Olive oil
25% Coconut oil
20% Palm oil
15% Shea butter

You decide to superfat 5% and use Shea butter for its unique skin care properties. Simply measure out an additional 5% (making a total of 20%) of Shea butter, but keep it separate from the rest.

Do your mixing of the oils and lye and when you reach trace, then stir in the additional 5% Shea butter, incidentally this is when you add fragrances too, so you may wish to warm and mix the shea butter with the fragrances before adding to the traced mixture.

I have gone into a fair amount of detail here, but I appreciate that I have also skipped over a few important areas. I am offering a completely free online course called All About Soap Making that can fill in the blanks, depending on your skill level with soap making you may find it of interest.

Ok, I confess, the course is free, but along the way I do offer some products that aren't, but you are under no obligation to buy anything.

If you are interested, click here.

More soon.