A simple cold-process calendula soap recipe with dried flower petals and citrus essential oils. Includes full DIY instructions.
What I love about this soap recipe is that it’s simple, looks pretty, and smells divine. It really has a citrusy punch that so many other natural soaps lack. The trick is to forget about using lemon or orange essential oils since they fade very quickly in soap. Instead, I introduce a blend using lemongrass and litsea cubeba essential oils. The latter is also called May Chang and is a lemony scented citrus fruit native to China.
Paired with golden calendula petals and a mineral color, this soap is one perfect for the whole family. It’s gentle on the skin and its scent is popular right across the board. It’s also palm-oil free and has clear and simple DIY instructions.
Decorated the tops of your bars with a swirl effect and dried calendula petals
Calendula Soap Recipe
On its own, calendula doesn’t have much of a scent. What it does add to handmade soap is natural color and decoration that don’t discolor. All too often, flower and plant materials will fade or turn brown in your cold-process soap recipes. Not so calendula. In this recipe it adds decoration to the tops of the bars and piece of it natural color the insides. It’s paired with a vibrant yellow mineral to give the soap a bright and sunny hue.
Also called the Pot Marigold, calendula is a skin-healing flower that you can use in skincare recipes. In cold-process soap it’s debatable as to whether those properties survive. If you wanted to make soap that has a better chance of providing therapy check out this recipe.
The insides of the bars are vibrantly yellow with specks of golden calendula petals
Soap molds to use
Using this recipe you’ll end up with about 5-6 standard sized bars. You might be wondering what soap molds to use though. The answer is any soap mold that you’d like. Silicone molds are my favourite and I have an entire piece that introduces many of the other types too.
The mold I used to make these bars is a take-away container. The kind that your rice comes in with your Chinese take-out. Line it with grease-proof paper like I’ve done in the photo above and your soap will be easy to pop out. One of these containers can be used indefinitely for soap making and will save you money and give waste a second life.
You cut your soap loaf into bars using a kitchen knife
Soap Making Equipment
Most of the equipment you need to make handmade soap is already in your kitchen. If it’s not, you can purchase it and in many cases use it for both soap making and cooking. To protect yourself from the lye-solution you should wear goggles and rubber gloves. You will also need a few other pieces of kit:
- Digital Thermometer gun
- Digital Kitchen Scale
- Stick (Immersion) Blender
- Stainless steel pan for melting the solid oils
- Heat-proof jug for the lye-solution
- A large bowl for measuring the liquid oils into
- Rubber spatula for stirring and scraping
- A small dish for mixing the color in
- Small sieve (strainer)
- Mixing color is a whizz with a milk frother
Handmade soap that the whole family will love
Zesty Citrus & Calendula Soap Recipe
Equipment
- Stainless steel pan for melting the solid oils
- A large bowl for measuring the liquid oils into
Ingredients
Lye water
- 64 g Sodium hydroxide 2.27 oz
- 115 g Distilled water 4.06 oz
Solid oils
- 146 g Coconut oil (refined) 5.15 oz
- 52 g Shea butter 1.83 oz
Liquid oils
- 123 g Olive oil 4.34 oz (light colored olive oil)
- 51 g Sunflower oil 1.8 oz
- 45 g Sweet almond oil 1.59 oz
- 37 g Castor oil 1.31 oz
- 1/16 tsp Yellow iron oxide (optional)
- 1 tsp Dried calendula petals (2 tsp fresh)
Add after Trace
- 9.33 g May Chang (Litsea cubeba) essential oil 1 tsp
- 4.66 g Lemongrass essential oil 1/2 tsp
To decorate
Instructions
- Pre-mix the yellow iron oxide in about a Tablespoon of the olive oil.
- Next, dissolve the lye (Sodium hydroxide) crystals in water. Gear up with eye protection, gloves, and wear a long sleeved top. In an airy place, outdoors is best, pour the lye crystals into the water and stir well. There will be a lot of heat and steam so be careful. Try not to breath it in. Leave outside in a safe place, or in a shallow basin of water to cool.
- Melt the solid oils in a stainless steel pan on very low heat. When melted, remove from the heat and set on a pot holder. Pour in the liquid oils including the colored oil. Sprinkle in one teaspoon dried calendula petals (or two teaspoons fresh).
- Measure the temperatures of the lye-water and the oils. You should aim to cool them both to be about 120°F / 49°C.
- Pour the lye-solution into the pan of oils. I tend to always pour the liquid through a sieve to catch any potential undissolved lye or bits.
- Dip your immersion blender into the pan and with it turned off, stir the mixture. Next, bring it to the center of the pan and with both your hands, hold it on the bottom of the pan and blitz it for just a couple seconds. Turn it off and stir the soap batter, using the blender as a spoon. Repeat until the mixture thickens up to 'Trace'. This is when the batter leaves a distinguishable trail on the surface. The consistency will be like thin custard.
- With your spatula, stir in the essential oils. Working quickly, pour the soap into the mold(s). To get the same effect on the tops of the bars as pictured, swirl the tops with a wooden skewer. Swirl it in small circles back and forth along the top. Afterwards, sprinkle the tops with more dried calendula petals (fresh won't work here).
- Turn your oven on to very low and heat for just a minute or two until it's 100°F / 38°C. Then turn your oven off, and pop your soap molds inside. Leave overnight. Oven-processing the soap like this intensifies the color.
- The next day, take the soap out of the oven and set someplace to rest for another day. Once 48 hours have passed, you can take the soap out of the mold(s). Cure it for 28 days before using. Curing means leaving the bars spaced out on a protected surface out of direct sunlight and in an airy place. This allows the extra water content to fully evaporate out.
- Once made, your soap will have a shelf-life of up to two years. Check the oil bottles that you're using though -- the closest best-by date is the best-by date of your soap.
Simple soap recipe series
Over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing soap recipes that have the same base oils and lye and water amount. What’s different about each is the color, natural scent, and botanical decoration.
Soap making ingredients can be expensive. However, if you are able to use the same base recipe different batches then you can save a lot of money and reduce waste. This is the first recipe in the series so make sure to check out the other recipes when they’re available.
- Zesty Citrus & Calendula soap recipe
- Lavender & Poppy seeds soap recipe
- Rose Geranium soap recipe
- Herbal soap recipe
- Read this introduction to Lovely Greens soap making for even more inspiration.
shirley duehring says
I would like to try this recipe and have all ingredients except the litsea—is there a substitute?
thank you!
shirley
lovelygreens says
Litsea cubeba is an essential oil added to this recipe for scent. It’s an optional ingredient and not necessary to make the soap itself.
Tiffany says
Hi there! What olive oil do you recommend? I see one linked, but I was going to use extra virgin olive oil. What do you recommend? Would I need to make any adjustments if I used Extra Virgin Olive Oil?
lovelygreens says
Hi Tiffany and you can use any olive oil you wish for this recipe — extra virgin, pomace, or “light-colored.” Just make sure that the olive oil isn’t blended with another oil, and if it isn’t, are it’s got a shelf-life of at least a year, go for it :)
Janice says
I was wondering if it’s ok to add sodium lactate to the lye water to get a harder bar of soap or is that unnecessary?
lovelygreens says
It’s unnecessary for this recipe, but that method is good for soap recipes that are softer and more difficult to un-mold. I recommend it for my castile soap recipe, but most of my other recipes are hard enough to not need it.
Janice says
I tried your Calendula soap recipe and I made a couple of mistakes but the bar looks beautiful with the Calendula petals. I noticed when I increase the recipe to x3 only the grams increase in size and the ounce measurements stay the same, I was confused about that.
lovelygreens says
That’s because that part of the recipe is added as a note, rather than in a convertible form. Sorry, but you’ll need to calculate oz manually.
Megan says
Hi. Can turmeric be used for coloring this and if so, how much. I just started and want to use what I have. Thanks!
lovelygreens says
Yes, and I’d recommend you look at this turmeric soap recipe for how to do it: https://lovelygreens.com/naturally-color-soap-with-turmeric/
Carolyn Jackson says
I want to make some soap, and have all the oils needed except for the almond oil, and due to the current climate I don’t want to have to go round shops seeing if any of them have some in. If I substitute one of the other liquid oils how much of it would I need? I assume it’s not just a straight swap?
lovelygreens says
Hi Carolyn, you may omit the 45g of sweet almond oil, and replace it with 45g more olive oil. Fortunately, the NaOH amount will not have to change either. Glad you’re keeping busy making soap during these times :)
Christine Quinlan says
I am quite new to soap making. I went to a workshop in November last year and this (zesty citrus and callendulla) was the first recipe I tried on my own at home minus the callendula.
I was very good and waited a full 6 weeks before trying it and it was worth the wait. This is definitely a keeper recipe thank you very much. It is also nice to find a recipe written in grams, for the non american market!
Consu says
Hi there! I love your page, you have many very interesting soap recipes like this one. I made a calendula soap for a long time and in addition to adding the essence of calendula, I got the properties of the plant acquired by the soap, infusing the distilled water with calendula. I will also try this recipe, thank you very much for sharing it! I read you from Spain, greetings!
Rose says
Could you please include American measurements in this recipe, please? Love a lot of your soap recipes!
lovelygreens says
Ounces (Oz) are listed for each ingredient Rose. In soap making you need to weigh everything — cup measurements are not accurate enough for chemistry :)
Glenda says
I love all your recipes and want to make the Zesty citrus calendula soap can. I do 50/50 of lemongrass and Lises
Ruby says
Amazing recipe thanks for sharing
lovelygreens says
You’re very welcome Ruby :) Keep an eye out for the next recipes — they’ll all use the same base oils and lye amount.
Glenda says
I love all your soap receipes still a little new to soap making can’t wait to make the calendula was concerned with only using 1/2 tsp lemongrass and 1 tsp litsea with enough of a lemon smell should the total Amy essential oils be 3 tsp for this batch of soap?? Can’t wait to try all your soap receipes
lovelygreens says
1.5 tsp is plenty in my opinion. You can go up to 3% (3 tsp) with these eo’s but with citrus oils I feel it’s too strong for some people’s skin.
Glenda says
Thank you I can’t wait to try your soap receipes