Crafting Soap at Home (Country Living)

Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly good!!
Review: I didn't really expect much when I read that it includes M&P recipes, but I was pleasantly surprised at how useful it looks!

Most of the book is concerned with recipes for CP soapmaking, with seven basic recipes (5 all veggie oil, one tallow, one goat-milk & veggie oil) and several specialty recipes. Without actually sitting down and counting recipes, I'd estimate that it's about 75% CP recipes, 22% rebatch/remilled CP recipes, and 3% M&P and other misc recipes. Lots of good photos of the soaps that are REAL - their rebatch pictures look like the lumpy weird soap I get when I rebatch, which I found to be refreshingly honest.

I haven't actually tried any of the recipes yet, but when I run them through online calculators they come up pretty good. I'll probably take 1-2% off the lye for several of the recipes to be at about 5-6% superfat, but there are a few I know I won't be changing.

Basic instructions looked good, accurate and concise, but might be a bit sparse for brand-new soapers if they have trouble following written instructions without any photos. Not a lot of charts and tables on the oils themselves, this is more of a recipe book than a reference book. Not a lot of pages are wasted on pictures of gloves and thermometers and little jars of oil - in fact there are no pictures of equpipment at all which I count as a plus...does anybody NOT know what a pair of gloves or a jar of olive oil looks like?

In addition to soap recipes, there are also a few stray recipes scattered in there for things such as hair rinse, laundry soap, bath tea, shower gel, how to infuse oils, dish soap, etc. All very simple, without a lot of bizarre or hard to find ingredients.

I was also happy to see that almost every recipe is vegetarian, and uses all natural ingredients. No synthetic fragrance oils or colorings are included in any of these recipes.

Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly good!!
Review: I didn't really expect much when I read that it includes M&P recipes, but I was pleasantly surprised at how useful it looks!

Most of the book is concerned with recipes for CP soapmaking, with seven basic recipes (5 all veggie oil, one tallow, one goat-milk & veggie oil) and several specialty recipes. Without actually sitting down and counting recipes, I'd estimate that it's about 75% CP recipes, 22% rebatch/remilled CP recipes, and 3% M&P and other misc recipes. Lots of good photos of the soaps that are REAL - their rebatch pictures look like the lumpy weird soap I get when I rebatch, which I found to be refreshingly honest.

I haven't actually tried any of the recipes yet, but when I run them through online calculators they come up pretty good. I'll probably take 1-2% off the lye for several of the recipes to be at about 5-6% superfat, but there are a few I know I won't be changing.

Basic instructions looked good, accurate and concise, but might be a bit sparse for brand-new soapers if they have trouble following written instructions without any photos. Not a lot of charts and tables on the oils themselves, this is more of a recipe book than a reference book. Not a lot of pages are wasted on pictures of gloves and thermometers and little jars of oil - in fact there are no pictures of equpipment at all which I count as a plus...does anybody NOT know what a pair of gloves or a jar of olive oil looks like?

In addition to soap recipes, there are also a few stray recipes scattered in there for things such as hair rinse, laundry soap, bath tea, shower gel, how to infuse oils, dish soap, etc. All very simple, without a lot of bizarre or hard to find ingredients.

I was also happy to see that almost every recipe is vegetarian, and uses all natural ingredients. No synthetic fragrance oils or colorings are included in any of these recipes.