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Charcoal Soap Recipe with an ‘Etched’ Leaf Design
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August 23, 2017 · 18 Comments

Charcoal Soap Recipe with an ‘Etched’ Leaf Design

Beauty· Soap

How to make soap naturally colored with activated charcoal and decorated with cypress cedar leaves. An easy charcoal soap recipe suitable for the beginner.

Last year as I was perusing soap at the Ballard Farmers Market I came across some rather interesting ‘Man Soap’. It was chunky, scented with sage and pine, and immediately got my attention. What I loved most about it was the shape, color, and leaf decoration and I couldn’t wait to try making my own. This charcoal soap recipe is my take on it with a simple fragrance blend that both men and women will like. In fact, it’s probably my new favorite! Cedarwood and Lemongrass.

The natural colorant in this soap is activated charcoal. It’s the same powdered charcoal that you take in supplements and can tint soap blue to lack, depending on how much you use. It doesn’t stain your bath or skin and some say that it might help with removing skin impurities and helping with acne.

How to make Cedarwood & Lemongrass Soap

Pine & Sage Soap by Karmela Botanica at the Ballard Farmers Market

Charcoal Soap Recipe

12oz / 350g batch — makes 3 bars
5% superfatted*
Read this free 4-part natural soapmaking series

Lye Solution
56g / 1.97oz Sodium Hydroxide
100g / 3.5oz Water
Optional: 3/4 tsp Sodium Lactate — adding this will make your soap become harder, faster

Solid oils
100g / 3.53oz Coconut Oil, Refined
20g / 0.7oz Shea Butter
20g / 0.7oz Cocoa Butter

Liquid oils
160g / 5.64oz Olive oil
20g / 0.7oz Castor oil
80g / 2.82oz Sunflower oil
1 tsp Activated Charcoal (you can also use 7 charcoal-filled capsules)

Scenting & Decorating
1 tsp Cedarwood Atlas Essential oil
1/2 tsp Lemongrass Essential oil
Optional: 4 drops Grapefruit Seed Extract
Optional: Clean and dry cedar leaves to decorate

Special Equipment needed

Digital Thermometer
Digital Kitchen Scale
Stick (Immersion) Blender
Silicone Loaf Soap Mold

Lovely Greens Guide to Natural Soapmaking
How to make Cedarwood & Lemongrass #soap

The finished bars of Cedarwood & Lemongrass soap

Made with creamy Shea and Cocoa Butters

This recipe will make three chunky bars if you pour the batch into a regular 40-44 oz silicone loaf mold. The activated charcoal that you add to the liquid oils will give the finished bars a pleasing blue-grey color but if you want it to be darker feel free to double the amount. After curing, the bars will be hard, the lather fluffy, and the lashings of shea and cocoa butter make the soap super moisturising.

How to Make Soap

If you’ve not made natural soap before, I highly recommend you have a read of my free 4-part natural soapmaking series. It will help you to understand the directions below a lot better. The steps laid out are very similar to the method described in part 4 of the series, with the addition of charcoal into the liquid oils and the cypress cedar leaves for decoration.

How to make Cedarwood & Lemongrass Soap

Activated charcoal gives the color

Let’s make some charcoal soap

Safety first! Make sure to be wearing closed-toe shoes, long sleeves, eye protection (goggles), and latex or washing-up gloves. You’ll be working with Sodium Hydroxide (Lye) and splashing a bit on your skin isn’t the most pleasant of experiences. To learn more about lye and lye safety read this piece on the equipment and safety needed for soapmaking.

You also need to have all of your ingredients measured and your work surface organised. Open a window for ventilation, close doors on pets and children, and have everything you need layed out:

  • Sodium hydroxide and water measured into heat-proof containers: glass, pyrex, or polypropylene plastic
  • Solid oils measured into a small stainless steel pan.
  • Liquid oils measured into a bowl
  • Charcoal measured out
  • Mold set out and ready. You’ll also need a light towel so have that ready too.
  • Stick blender plugged in and ready
  • Digital thermometer out
  • Utensils laid out: stainless steel spoon for stirring the lye solution, a small fine-mesh strainer, and a flexible spatula
  • Fragrance and extras at the ready: essential oil, grapefruit seed extract, and cedar leaves
  • Read all of the directions thoroughly before making your soap.

Step 1: Make the Lye Solution

Wearing eye and hand protection (goggles & gloves) and in a well-ventilated place, pour the lye crystals into the water. The water should be measured out into a heat-proof plastic jug. Stir well with a stainless steel spoon until fully dissolved, trying not to breathe in the steam. Place the jug of lye solution in a small basin of water to cool down. The water gets super hot when you mix in the lye!  I usually fill my sink with water and place the jug in there.

Step 2: Melt the Solid Oils

Place all of the solid oils into a pan and place it on the stove. Begin melting them at the lowest heat setting.

Step 3: Blend the Charcoal into the Liquid Oils

Blend the charcoal powder into a little of the sunflower oil with a milk frother or spoon. When there are no lumps left, pour it into the rest of the liquid oils and stir well.

Step 4: Mix the Melted Oil with the Liquid

When the solid oils have just finished melting, take the pan off the heat and mix in the charcoal tinted liquid oil. Pour the tinted oil through a mesh strainer to ensure you catch any chunks of charcoal that weren’t completely mixed in.

Stir and take the oil’s temperature — I mixed my soap at 125°F / 52°C. You can comfortably mix yours when the oils are between 110°F and 130°F. The warmer the oils, the more intense the color will be though.

Step 5: Mix the Lye Solution into the Oils

When the oils are at the temperature you want, it’s time to mix in the lye solution. You need to take its temperature too and it should be within ten degrees (plus or minus) of the temperature of the oil. If you’re adding the optional Sodium Lactate (to make the soap harder) then stir it into the lye solution when it’s below 130°F / 54°C. Pour the lye solution through the mesh strainer and into the pan of oils.

Step 6: Bring the charcoal Soap to ‘Trace’

When the lye and oils combine properly, they ‘Saponify’ and become soap. You use a stick (immersion) blender to help this process and you know you’ve succeeded when your oils and lye solution begins to thicken up like in the photo below. You do this by alternating stirring with gentle pulsing, always keeping the head of the blender submerged in the soap batter.

I made a video showing the technique I teach in my soap making lessons in this video on how to make Lemongrass soap. While you’re over there on YouTube, make sure to subscribe to my channel.

How to make Cedarwood & Lemongrass Soap

Trace is when the soap batter thickens to the consistency of warm custard

Step 7: Mix in the Fragrance & Pour

When your soap has hit ‘Trace’, stir in the essential oils and optional Grapefruit Seed Extract. The former is your fragrance and the GSE helps to prolong shelf-life in a natural way — it’s an antioxidant rather than a preservative. When fully mixed in, pour your soap batter into molds, place your optional cedar leaves on top. Wherever the leaves touch the soap, the leaves will darken to almost black. If you want the leaves to stay green you’ll need to press them into the soap after it’s been chopped into bars.

Now cover the soap lightly with a towel. The towel shouldn’t touch the soap and its purpose is to keep the soap warm which helps with creating a consistent color.

How to make Cedarwood & Lemongrass Soap

Decorate the top with cedar leaves

Step 8: Unmold, Cut, & Cure your charcoal soap

You leave your soap in the mold for at least 24 hours and if you used Sodium Lactate the soap will be hard after that time. If you didn’t, the soap will have hardened but it will still be soft around the edges — the soap might stick to the mold when you try to push it out. Best wait a few days before trying and/or pop the mold into the freezer for half an hour beforehand.

Once out of the mold, cut the loaf into bars, and cure for 4-6 weeks before using. All this means is to set the soap in an airy place out of the way, and out of direct sunlight. It needs the time for allowing the water content to evaporate out and for the bars to fully harden. For full instructions on how to cure handmade soap head over here

I’m sure that you and any of the recipients of this soap will be pleased with the end product. It smells woodsy yet fresh and has a natural blue-grey tint. Best of all, you’ve made it all by yourself!

You might also like

  • Part 1: Natural Soapmaking for Beginners – IngredientsPart 1: Natural Soapmaking for Beginners – Ingredients
  • How to make Natural Lemongrass SoapHow to make Natural Lemongrass Soap
  • Natural Rosemary Soap Recipe for Oily Skin with Cambrian Blue ClayNatural Rosemary Soap Recipe for Oily Skin with Cambrian Blue Clay
  • Woad Soap Recipe: Naturally coloring soap blueWoad Soap Recipe: Naturally coloring soap blue
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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Shelley says

    November 23, 2020 at 1:43 pm

    Thanks for the instructions. They are beautiful. How long will the cedar leaf last before turning brown and drying up? Thanks!

    Reply
    • lovelygreens says

      December 9, 2020 at 2:33 pm

      The leaf turns black actually and lasts for many months, if well over a year.

      Reply
  2. Baila says

    October 18, 2018 at 12:00 pm

    Hello Tanya, I want to ask one thing I made cold process soap first time everything is alright but one thing I did not understand there is white layer on my soap can u tell me why there is white layer on my soap when I cut it into bars and how can I prevent it tbanks

    Reply
    • lovelygreens says

      October 19, 2018 at 7:33 am

      Hi Baila and that layer is called soda ash. It’s common in soap making when you’re using the full water amount called for in a recipe. I also find it happened to me more often when it was cooler — so when I was soap making in winter. If you want to avoid it altogether, then reduce the water in your soap making recipe. I tend to use 1.8x the lye weight for the amount of water I use.

      Reply
  3. Ada Ho says

    September 15, 2018 at 5:50 am

    Any oil can substitute cocoa butter and sunflower oil as I don’t have these on hand? Thanks.

    Reply
    • lovelygreens says

      September 17, 2018 at 10:24 am

      Never try substituting oils in a soap recipe unless you’re experienced in making soap. The amount of lye in a recipe will differ based on how much of each type of oil is used. Each oil has it’s own saponification value, meaning it needs a specific amount of lye to convert into soap. If you try substituting oils then your soap could fail or even worse, be unsafe.

      Reply
  4. Linda Raedisch says

    January 22, 2018 at 12:37 pm

    I’m eager to try the cedar leaves on top of my soap. What other leaves do you think would work well. It’s winter now, so are there leaves I can find in the supermarket that would do?

    Reply
    • lovelygreens says

      January 22, 2018 at 12:54 pm

      Try rosemary — it should give a similar look

      Reply
  5. Lisa Mitchell says

    November 5, 2017 at 3:28 pm

    Tanya, can I use just cedarwood eo? I don’t have cw atlas…..

    Reply
    • lovelygreens says

      November 6, 2017 at 9:15 am

      Of course! 🙂

      Reply
  6. Camille says

    September 3, 2017 at 6:08 am

    This sounds like a great recipe! Can it be made by hot process?

    Reply
    • lovelygreens says

      September 3, 2017 at 8:37 pm

      Yes! Most (if not all) cold process soap recipes can be made using the HP method.

      Reply
  7. Claudia. Mazurkiewicz says

    September 1, 2017 at 4:25 pm

    So if you use the melt and pour , you don’t use the lye?

    Reply
    • lovelygreens says

      September 1, 2017 at 4:37 pm

      I’ve not tried the charcoal and leaf technique with M&P before but I imagine the colours will be different. Other than that, it should work fine 🙂

      Reply
  8. Pauline says

    August 27, 2017 at 2:16 pm

    Love the sound of this one, it will make a nice change from the usual florally scents. Thank you for the great recipes.
    You seem to use quite a low amount of EO’s, do you find that the fragrance is still good after the cure?

    Reply
    • lovelygreens says

      August 28, 2017 at 9:19 am

      It’s a very good amount and yes, the scent is great. You really don’t need any more essential oil than 2-3% of a recipe and you actually cannot sell soaps in the European Union that contain more.

      Reply
  9. ALMA PATTERSON says

    August 24, 2017 at 3:43 am

    thank you for your tutorials i enjoy watching and learning from you i am a new soaper

    Reply
    • lovelygreens says

      August 24, 2017 at 10:56 am

      You’re so welcome Alma! If you’d like to, please share some of your creations with me over on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lovely.greens.iom/

      Reply

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Tanya Anderson Lovely Greens Welcome to Lovely Greens. I'm Tanya and I share ideas on growing organic herbs, vegetables, and fruit and then creatively using them in the home, beauty, and kitchen. Learn more about Lovely Greens

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