It's Working Naked Day! (With Two Easy & Luxurious Recipes)

Don’t panic! No one has to disrobe! (Whew! It’s kinda cold for that nonsense in Alaska in February!) Instead, let’s work on making naked products. My idea for today is to leave out extras like scents and colors while we just focus on skin-loving goodness in soap and lotion.

Butters featured are (from left in photo) Mango Butter, Illipe Nut Butter, and Sal Butter.

Before working at The Sage, I created and sold goat milk soaps. I found that triple butter soaps always generate lots of interest. My top selling triple butter bars included Mango, Shea, and Avocado Butters. There’s something lovely about combining three luxurious butters in one product. For these recipes, I wanted to use that same concept to highlight three incredible butters that are marvelous for pampering your skin.

• Mango Butter
  • Mango Butter is an exotic oil that has a buttery feel at body temperature. It feels just marvelous applied directly to the skin! My only disappointment is that it doesn’t smell like mangoes. 😉
    • Recommended usage rates is 3-12.5% in bar soaps, 2-20% in Lotions and Creams: and try 5 to 100% in lip or body balms.
• Sal Butter
  • Sal Butter is one of our newest butters in our line of fixed oils, and it is very similar to Shea Butter. I did a series comparing Sal and Shea – check it out here. Sal butter is grainy at room temperature, but it does not cause any grainy feelings in end products. It provides a luxurious emollient you’ll love.
    • Recommended usage rates are 3-6% in soap, 2-20% in lotions and creams; for body and lip balms, try 3-100%.
• Illipe Nut Butter
  • Illipe Nut Butter is another newer butter. It is brittle at room temperature, which contributes to a hard bar of soap and a thick viscosity in leave-on products. It’s a very nice butter that adds a richness to body care products.
    • Recommended usage rate in soap is 3-6% and 2-20% in lotions.

For our soap, we’ll stay simple with the recipe. To take full advantage of the triple butters, I’m going to increase to 7% superfat rather than my usual 5%. That will leave more of the unsaponified oils in the bar of soap. Be aware that the resulting bar may not last as long on the shelf before becoming rancid. But why would anyone want to leave such a fabulous bar on a shelf? It belongs in the shower as soon as possible!

To round out my recipe, I chose Olive Oil for dense, creamy lather; Palm Kernel Oil provides the bigger bubbles. Soybean Oil is a great stable foundation for a hard, white bar of soap. Goat milk is my liquid. It produces a bar of soap that takes advantage of all the goodness of milk. Like a milk bath in a bar!

Let’s gather what we need to make some fabulous soap!

Please begin with this blog post if you have never made cold process soap before! Then join me in the kitchen to make this soap.

Triple-Butter Soap:

Pour the lye mixture slowly to avoid splashes.

Stirring after stick blending to be sure the batter is at trace.

After the oils are melted, the frozen cubes of milk are ready to be combined with lye. Why frozen milk? Because when you add lye to milk, it can superheat in seconds, and that will scorch the milk, rendering it unusable. Using frozen milk allows you to soap at cooler temperatures, which preserve the delicate components of the milk that provide additional skin benefits. Slowly, I pour the lye over the milk cubes, and I use a silicone spatula to begin stirring. It’s important when stirring lye and frozen milk to be sure you don’t accidentally flip lye crystals out of the mixing vessel. I like to use a container that is wide enough at the base for the cubes to move around a lot as the lye melts them. Once the mixture is liquid, stir, stir, stir until you’re sure all the lye is dissolved. It’s harder to tell in opaque liquid! I lift my spatula out of the liquid and watch the mixture slide off to see if there are undissolved lye crystals. By the time the lye has all dissolved, the mixture is usually around 85-90 degrees F. This is a great range for soaping with milk! I usually have to cool my oils in a basin of cool water to get them to around 100 degrees.

Pouring the soap batter into my drawer organizer lined with plastic wrap.

I made a simple design on top of the soap after it was in the mold.

I wrapped the mold in towels to insulate it. This allows the soap to completely go through the gel phase.

Add the lye mixture to the oils slowly to avoid splashing, and use a stick blender to pulse and stir until a thin trace is reached. At this point, since we aren’t adding anything to the soap, I’ll keep mixing and pulsing the stick blender until I’m sure everything is well combined.

The mold I’m using is a plastic drawer organizer lined with plastic wrap. Soap molds can be just about anything! I insulted the soap in the mold to help it complete the gel phase. I’ll let the soap cure for 24 hours in the mold before trying to unmold and cut it.

While we wait for the soap to be ready to cut, let’s make some Triple Butter Naked Lotion!

I like the idea of the three butters starring in the lotion, too. Here’s the recipe I formulated to take advantage of the triple butter blend without becoming too greasy on the skin.

Triple Butter Naked Lotion:

Instructions:

Weigh water, oils, Dry Flo TS, emulsifying wax, glycerin, and stearic acid in a measuring cup with a spout. Microwave until the oils and wax are melted. Use a stick blender to thoroughly combine all the ingredients.

The ingredients to be heated are in the large beaker. The Vitamin E Natural and preservative are in the small beaker.

After heating for 2 minutes, I used a stick blender.

Allow the mixture to cool below 120 degrees F before adding Vitamin E Natural and Liquid Germall Plus. Because this formula stiffens very quickly as it cools, I put the cooled lotion into a bag before adding the last two ingredients. I mixed the lotion well inside the bag, then I snipped off a corner, and piped the lotion into the jars.

When the lotion was well mixed, I poured it into a plastic zip bag to cool. When it was below 120 degrees F, I added the antioxidant and preservative and mixed by hand inside the bag.

After snipping off a corner, I piped the lotion into the jars.

This is a very stiff lotion. It is too thick to dispense in a squeeze bottle or pump. A jar is the way to go.

The recipe as written will fill ten of our 1-ounce jars.

This lotion is a stiff mixture that feels amazing on my winter-dry hands. It absorbs quickly, leaving very little greasiness. My hands felt protected by a layer of moisture.

The Dry Flo TS makes this formula feel very powdery. If that is not a feeling you like, drop the Dry Flo TS percentage to 2% and add the 3% to the water. I almost did that before I made the lotion, but I decided to leave the usage rate at 5% and see how it came out.

I’m happy with the formula. It is very thick and moisturizes without feeling heavy on the skin. I applied some right before I washed some dishes; when I finished, my hands still felt moisturized. Even so, I used another dollop and was glad to see my skin readily absorbed it. I think this triple butter lotion could be fantastic on feet as well.