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In Pursuit of the Perfect Recipe There are many places online to find recipes. One of my favorite places is the Recipe Nook in the Soapnuts Library. www.soapnuts.com Here you will find two great places to start your search; the Recipe Nook and the Members Only section. All the recipes in these two sections were submitted by your fellow Soapnuts list members, both past and present. And, of course, you can always create your own recipe from scratch! Now you need to ask yourself some questions; “what do I want to make?” and “what do I want the product to do?” Are you looking for a hard bar of soap with a great lather and delicious scent blend or a bubbly bubble bath with moisturizing skin-friendly oils, or are you trying out something totally new? Now that you have a direction to go, head off to Soapnuts Library and start searching! First you may need to do some research…but I usually start by reading the recipes. This gives me an ‘idea’ of what I really want. Find something that looks good? I’m sure you will, there are hundreds of great recipes in the Nook and Members Only sections. So, you’ve found a recipe…read over it and see what you think. Do you want to make it ‘as is’ or will you be substituting ingredients? For the first time and for research/experimental purposes, it might be a good idea to make the product as the recipe is written. This will give you a starting point; you will know what the final product is like and then you’ll have a better idea of what changes you want to make. Don’t forget to take notes and keep track of everything; trust me, someday you’ll want to know some minute fact about that ‘original’ recipe. If you keep good notes with the recipe you’ll always be able to look back and find what information you seek. Not happy with the final product? Then you’re going to have to make some adjustments to the recipe. This is where you will have to have some knowledge on the qualities of different oils and other soap & body making ingredients. You can find this information in numerous books and websites. There is a wealth of information of this sort available in the Soapnuts Library; an oil quality chart, information on using micas, coloring cold process soap, a non-comedogenic chart and specialty oil descriptions; just to name a few! Using this information that you’ve researched, it’s time to adjust the recipe to suit your preferences. Some ways you can adjust the recipe is to substitute equal amounts of different oils for the ones called for in the recipe; add a few ounces of a different oil to the original recipe; delete an oil from the recipe…anything goes, really! Just juggle them around a bit until you get something you are happy with, keeping in mind the oil qualities and what you want as the final product. If this is a soap recipe, make sure you run it through one of the lye calculators. This is a great safety check…even if the recipe is a tried and true one from a fellow ‘Nut, even if it is a recipe straight out of a book…always be on the safe side and recalculate the lye amount. Now it’s time to make your ‘new’ product from your
adjusted recipe. What do you think
of it? Need more adjusting? If so, get busy and tweak it some more.
Perhaps you are you happy with your final product? If so, then congratulations are in due, because you’ve just created the
perfect recipe! ~ Denise Washburn
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