With the beautiful scent of Rose Geranium (essential oil)
A soap for purists: 100% tallow (The fat came from an organic farm here in the Marlborough Sounds and was rendered by us - we do render all our tallow ourselves).
I infused the tallow with rhubarb powder (harvested from rhubarb roots from our garden - they were cleaned and processed, than dehydrated and milled into a fine powder and then infused with the tallow).
I put a lot of care into the recipe - because normally 100% tallow soaps don't lather very well, I added some sugar and citric acid, which helps to get more lather and also decided to use the dual lye method. I used mainly the usual sodium hydroxide (NaOh - lye), but added a part of potassium hydroxide (KOH - lye) as well. This is usually used for liquid soaps, but has the advantage here of producing a bit more lather than a 100% NaOh soap usually would.
The biggest surprise with this soap was the colour - from a sort of ochre yellow in the infusion it turned dark red when I added the lye - these are the things that make you feel like a proper witch behind the cauldron...
Please be aware that natural colours do fade after a while, so might not look as bright and crisp as on the photo. The rhubarb colour also looks more beigy (if that is a word?!) when you start using it.
Just to clarify:
The tallow that I use for the soaps is organic, but it's not officially
certified. The farm I get it from used to be certified, but they now
planted heaps of native trees on their property (because they are very
environmentally conscious). Unfortunately they
needed to spray roundup in these places (not on their paddocks, where
the animals graze though) and therefore lost their organic certification.
I use tallow from our own sheep as well (which are organically kept - no
chemicals involved), but again, we are not certified.
So the tallow is organic (not certified), but the whole soap is not.
I use Essential oils from reputable sources
(Pure Nature and Zen Aroma), but they are not organic either.
Soap ingredients:
Saponified fats: 100% Organic Tallow (infused with rhubarb powder - organically grown in our garden here in the Kenepuru Sound). Soap Nut liquid, Glycerine*, Citric Acid, Sugar, Essential Oil
Essential Oil: Rose Geranium
*Please note that I don't put any extra glycerine into the soap - this is just the glycerine that is created naturally during the soap making process.
According to NZ labelling rules the final ingredients of a product have to be listed
