Make your own soap with Click & Grow basil #DIY

We love a good recipe, especially when it comes from a Click & Grower and features some fresh plants. Not all recipes have to be for some spectacular dish though as the use cases for fresh plants are endless. Today we wanted to share with you a recipe by the wonderful blogger Humblebee & Me that shows how easy it is to make fresh soap at home using fresh basil. 

Here's the whole recipe from Humblebee & Me:

Lemon Basil Soap

15% shea butter
25% tallow (wondering why?)
25% coconut oil
30% olive oil (pomace)
5% castor oil

Calculate to 5% superfat

Per 500g fats:

• 15g | 0.53oz lemon essential oil
• 7g | 0.25oz basil essential oil
• 10g | 2 tbsp French green clay
• 6 to 8 Fresh basil leaves
• 8g | 1 tbsp rhassoul clay

STEP1: Kick things off by calculating out your recipe for the amount of soap you’re making to get the finite amounts of the fats, lye, and water. 

STEP2: Prepare your mould—you’ll want a loaf mould for this soap. Melt your oils together in your soaping pot, and have a container with a pouring spout handy. Let your oils cool to room temperature. Mix up your lye water (I used a 1L mason jar, giving me an easy cover for the cooling time) and let that cool to room temperature as well (you can use ice for part of your water to speed up the cooling process).

STEP3: While everything is cooling, weigh out your essential oils, and measure out the clays. Pick the basil leaves, rinse them, and gently pat them dry. Set everything out so you have an organized work space.

STEP4: Once the melted fats and lye water are at room temperature, follow standard soap making procedure to bring them to trace. Once you have a relatively thin trace, blend in the essential oils.

STEP5: Now it’s time to divide up our batter! Weigh out about 25% of it into your second pitcher. Add the French green clay to the larger portion of the batter, and blend the rhassoul clay and fresh basil leaves into the smaller portion of the batter.

ALMOST DONE: Pour the batters into your mold in alternating order, zig-zagging as you go. The weight of the next layer of the batter will cause some mixing; that’s ok. Once you get to the top, finish with the French green clay batter, and do some gentle scoopy swirls to bring up a bit of the basil batter. Leave to saponify for 24–48 hours. Remove from the mould and slice,  and then leave to age for at least three weeks before using. Enjoy!

Head to Humblebee & Me to read the full post and see each step with photos!

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