Natural homemade coffee and cocoa soap
Water brewed with coffee instead of plain distilled —
the recipe step by step
The colour and the scent of this soap come from two things you already have in the kitchen: ground coffee and cocoa powder.
What sets it apart from the other recipes is the water. Instead of plain distilled water, this soap takes distilled water brewed with coffee.
Lye, the trace and safety are explained in the guide, so what follows here is only the numbers and the steps.
The recipe
Ingredients:
- Olive oil — 405 g / 14.28 oz
- Sunflower oil — 180 g / 6.35 oz
- Canola oil — 180 g / 6.35 oz
- Sesame oil — 90 g / 3.17 oz
- Castor oil — 50 g / 1.76 oz
- Lye, sodium hydroxide (NaOH) — 114 g / 4.02 oz
- Distilled coffee water — 205 g / 7.23 oz
- Cocoa powder — 15 g / 3 tsp
- Coffee grounds, dried twenty four hours in advance — 15 g / 3 tsp
- Coffee beans to decorate — 100 g / 3.5 oz
- Lye discount — five per cent
For the distilled coffee water, pour 444 g / 15.66 oz of hot distilled water over 25 g / 0.88 oz of ground coffee. Then 205 g / 7.23 oz of that strained water goes into the recipe.
The coffee grounds are dried twenty four hours in advance, so prepare them the day before. Damp grounds do not belong in soap.
Weigh the ingredients
Brew and weigh the coffee water
Put 25 g / 0.88 oz of ground coffee into a French press and pour 444 g / 15.66 oz of hot distilled water over it.
Once the water has cooled, strain it and weigh out 205 g / 7.23 oz. That is what goes into the recipe.
Weigh the lye
Weigh 114 g / 4.02 oz of sodium hydroxide into a separate bowl.
Goggles, mask and gloves go on before you open the lye.
Weigh the oils
Weigh all five oils into the pot: 405 g olive, 180 g sunflower, 180 g canola, 90 g sesame and 50 g castor.
Zero the scales before each oil. There are five of them here, so a slip is easy.
Make the soap
Pour the lye into the water
Slowly pour the lye into the water. Never the other way around, as it can provoke a violent reaction. Work near an open window and keep your face away from the pot and the fumes.
Stir a few times with a plastic or stainless steel spoon until the lye dissolves in the water.
Match the temperatures
Let the lye solution cool to between 30 and 50 °C / 86 and 122 °F, and heat the oils to roughly the same temperature. A difference of up to eight degrees is fine.
Combine and blend to a trace
Pour the hot lye solution into the oils. Blend without moving the blender, then switch it off and stir by hand. Repeat until you reach the trace — about five minutes.
Add the cocoa and the coffee grounds
Stir 15 g / 3 tsp of cocoa powder and 15 g / 3 tsp of dried coffee grounds into the trace. Keep stirring until the colour is even throughout.
Pour the soap into the mould
Pour the soap into the silicone mould and smooth the top with a spatula.
Decorate the top
Scatter a little ground coffee over the top and arrange the coffee beans, 100 g / 3.5 oz. Press the beans in gently so they hold once the soap sets.
Cover the soap and leave it
From here there are two options:
- Cover the soap with cardboard and a towel and leave it for at least twenty four hours, though forty eight is better.
- Put the uncovered mould into a previously heated, now switched off oven at 50 °C / 122 °F and leave it for twenty four hours.
Cut the soap into bars
Take the soap out of the silicone mould and cut it with a knife into slices 2 cm / 1 inch wide.
Let the soap cure
Set the bars on a rack, cover them with a cloth, and leave them somewhere cold and dark for at least a month. For the best result, give them three months.
Curing time counts from the day of cutting, not from the day the soap went into the mould.
Where to go next
The other naturally coloured soap is the rosemary soap, where spirulina gives the green. Without colour or herbs there is the castile soap, and a different ending belongs to the liquid soap.
Every text about living with less waste sits on the zero waste page.
Want less waste in the kitchen?
I offer zero waste consultations in Zagreb and the surrounding area. Book a free 20 minute call and we will look at where to begin.
