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Hot Process Soap Making in a Crock Pot Recipe #2 By Roma Christensen This photo shows some of the stuff you need to get together to make soap. You will also need to wear a long sleeve shirt, long pants, shoes that cover your toes and an apron.
This recipe did not turn out like I wanted it to. I’ll show you why. Pioneer Soap Recipe
· I thought it would be easy to make soap with animal fat. But, I was mistaken. It heats up hotter than vegetable soaps and dries out quicker. When I make it again, I will increase the water content to 25 oz and stir more frequently.
Pour the lye slowly and stir quickly with a long handled plastic or wooden spoon. Don’t stir too fast or you will cause the mixture to splash out of the crock pot. Next, get your hand held electric blender and start blending on low speed.
After about 5 minutes you will notice that the mixture is getting slightly thicker and is not as shiny as it was when you started. This is called “trace”. (Now is the time to measure fragrance oils in a dish so that they are ready when you need them.)
Now, just put the lid on your crock pot and watch and wait for the first signs of the gel stage. See how the edges are starting to pull away from the crock pot. (This is where I should have started stirring the soap so that the heat would have been more evenly distributed.) But, I didn’t… so here are the photos of what happened after that.
I had to move fast now. I added the fragrance oils and stirred fast. (The fragrance oils evaporated so fast that I nothing was left to make the soap smell good. I had to get the soap out of the pot and into the mold immediately! It was crumbly. My daughter helped me to pour the soap into the mold. Remember that the crock pot is very hot at this point… you need help to get the soap in the mold. I used a spray bottle filled with water and sprayed the top of the soap in the mold so that I could smooth it out. The soap hardened really fast. When I turned the mold over the soap fell right out of the mold. I cut the bars immediately and used a potato peeler to smooth out the edges. The shavings are crumbly. I will use them to wash clothes. All in all, the soap works ok… but it doesn’t have a wonderful fragrance. And it is not as gentle to my skin.
Would I make this soap again… probably… but I would add more water and make sure that it didn’t overheat by stirring it sooner. I would watch it closely because it cooked a lot faster than I thought it would. I would add extra ingredients at the end to make it more moisturizing.
Roma Christensen Copyright © Aunt Roma's 2009 - 2010 by Roma Christensen
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I
melted the fat in a plastic bucket (I used an empty lard bucket) in the
microwave and added the liquid fat to my crock pot… good So far. Then I
weighed the distilled water into my plastic pitcher and put the pitcher in
the sink and opened the window for ventilation. 
I
donned my personal protective clothing including safety glasses, rubber
gloves, and apron and proceeded to weigh the exact amount of lye needed
for the recipe. You will notice two kinds of lye in the next photo,
however, the grocery stores stopped carrying “Red Devil” brand lye so now
I have to order the lye online. (The chemical name for lye is NaOH or
Sodium Hydroxide). It is vital that you understand how caustic lye is… it
can cause severe burns and even death if it were ingested. So please read
the safety instructions thoroughly and print a copy of the MSDS (material
safety data sheet) so that NO ONE gets HURT… including animals! 
Now
it is time to add the lye solution to the melted fats. 
The
soap mixture was cooking too fast. (Even on low heat). It was drying
out. And, when I stirred… it still had liquid underneath. (I should have
been stirring it long before now).
