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Rebecca’s Best Ever Handmade Big Lick Salt Bar Soap Recipe

DIY Handmade Cold Process Soap Recipe - Rebecca's Best Ever Homemade Big Lick Salt Bar Soap RecipeMy Big Lick Salt Bar soap was once a regular favorite of my local customers as well as those spread across the USA when I sold soap. It’s formula is the perfect combination of moisture rich soapmaking oils and detoxifying bath salts. The fresh, clean fragrance of my Big Lick Salt Bar is appreciated by both men and women. The scent is a fragrance blend of green clover, ivy and aloe combined with notes of grapefruit, orange, tangerine, and persimmon.

Rebecca’s Best Ever Big Lick Salt Bar Recipe

© Rebecca’s Soap Delicatessen

Ingredients:

4.5 oz. cocoa butter
4.5 oz. shea butter
2 lb. 7 oz. palm kernel flakes
1 lb. 2 oz. sustainable palm oil
1 lb. 5 oz. olive oil
1 lb. 5 oz. rice bran oil

36 fluid oz. distilled water
15 oz. lye (sodium hydroxide)

At trace:

1/2 cup medium bath water crystals
6 oz. Democrat fragrance oil
Matte Cobalt Blue Pigment Powder to suit, optional

Instructions:

This soap fills three of my soapmaking molds and will yield approximately 30-36 bars depending on how they are cut. To make this soap, follow your basic cold process soapmaking instructions, stirring in the fragrance oil, pigment and bath water crystals as light trace using your stick (immersion) blender. (You can also stir in the pigment into the oils BEFORE you add the lye-water to ensure it is well blended.) Then pour into lined molds, cover and insulate. After 24 hours you can unmold and cut these into bars. Allow to cure for at least three weeks before use. The final bars will be very hard, solid bars with a creamy, lotion like lather.

For more cold process soapmaking recipes as well as other bath and beauty diy’s be sure to follow me on Pinterest.

23 Comments

  • Tiffany Barry

    July 5, 2013 at 12:34 pm

    Ooo! I love detoxifying salts and moisturizing stuff in the same bar. I’m no soap guru, so I’ll definitely have to try this bar when my current one runs out!

  • jenn

    September 15, 2013 at 10:16 am

    hey rebecca,

    can i use any kind of bath salt…like epsom, solar, dead sea? i am thinking its the same as your described medium bath crystals…let me know what your thoughts are…im getting excited to making my first batch of the big lick salt bar let alone my first time making soap.

    thanks for your help in advance,

    jenn

    1. Rebecca D. Dillon

      September 15, 2013 at 10:46 am

      The bath crystals are a sea salt. So any medium coarse sea salt would yield the same effect. If using a finer grain salt you’d want to use less since a cup of coarse grain salt is obviously not quite the same amount as fine grain salt due to the size and shape of the salt. Good luck!

  • Kristen

    January 1, 2014 at 5:38 pm

    Hi i love your recipes and i want to try your soap recipe, i notice all the recipes with salt in them are very high in coconut oil and produce a very cleansing bar, higher than i would like. Does the salt change it some how to make it more nourishing. i usually keep the coconut oil at 15% because my skin is so dry.
    Thank you

    1. Jade

      June 2, 2014 at 12:08 pm

      A salt bar (with 50% or higher salt) needs a high amount of coconut oil as that’s the only oil that will lather in the presence of salt. This is countered by a 20% superfat, and often a recipe is 75% coconut, 25% olive/avocado/Shea. I find coconut drying but have made a salt bar using 75% coconut, 25% avocado oil, 20% superfat and 75% salt and I absolutely love it – it’s not drying at all. Hope that helps!

  • Jocelyn

    February 16, 2014 at 11:56 am

    I noticed that you don’t have coconut oil in this receipe? Is there a reason for not doing so?

    1. Rebecca D. Dillon

      February 16, 2014 at 1:39 pm

      I was initially created recipes without coconut oil as I had customers on the market way back when who were allergic to it. However, coconut oil in higher percentages can also dry out skin as it’s extra cleansing and I didn’t want to couple that with the salt. It’s not necessary to use coconut oil so I didn’t.

  • Monica

    March 3, 2014 at 12:18 pm

    Rebecca,

    I am new to the soapmaking world. Do you know if it is possible to mold salt bars? I made my first batch of cold process soap from the Everything Soapmaking book. I know the process is really hot so I didn’t know if it would melt the molds. I would like to do sea shapes for an ocean theme. Thanks for your help and comments. Your recipe looks like one I will try next, thanks for sharing

    1. Rebecca D. Dillon

      March 3, 2014 at 1:17 pm

      You can use a silicone mold for this without any issue.

      1. Monica

        March 3, 2014 at 2:32 pm

        Thank you! I appreciate your quick response.

  • Toya

    May 18, 2014 at 2:17 pm

    Hi! I am trying to use all natural ingredients in my soaps and no fragrances. Is there an essential oil combination I could use in place of the Democratic fragrance?

    1. Rebecca D. Dillon

      May 18, 2014 at 5:49 pm

      The scent is what makes the bar unique and what my customers loved about this soap. If you want a fragrance free soap, simply omit the fo. I don’t know of any eo’s that smell like this particular fragrance.

      1. Toya

        May 19, 2014 at 12:46 pm

        If I used an EO blend of Tea Tree and Cedarwood, how much of each would you recommend?

        1. Rebecca D. Dillon

          May 19, 2014 at 5:50 pm

          2% of the oil weight.

  • Toya

    June 24, 2014 at 7:56 pm

    So I wanted to break this down into 1 mold. This is my first time trying to resize a batch and using a calculator. I size 1 mold for 47 oz. I’m not sure if that’s even the right amount for one mold. Is this recipe right?
    1.27oz cocoa butter
    1.27oz shea butter
    11.04 oz palm kernel flakes
    5.09 oz palm oil
    5.95 olive oil
    5.95 rice bran oil
    10.19 oz water
    4.25 oz lye
    1.13 oz bath crystals
    .85 oz essential oil

    This is definitely not a third of the recipe and why I am asking to make sure I did it right.

  • cynthia

    November 1, 2014 at 1:25 pm

    i just made this soap and it’s in the mold now. 🙂 i wonder about the salt content–other salt bar recipes have enormous amounts of salt, many saying it should be the same amount as the weight of the oil. yours has only a half cup–and indeed when i mixed it up it seemed it was just a tiny amount that fell to the bottom of the pan and didn’t blend throughout very well. did i do something wrong? i don’t imagine it’ll have the nice evenly speckled appearance as yours in the pic above.

    1. Rebecca D. Dillon

      November 1, 2014 at 2:03 pm

      If you mix the soap to a full trace the salt will be evenly distributed throughout the bar. Despite the lesser amount of salt it’s still a great salt bar just a different take.

  • cynthia

    November 1, 2014 at 4:44 pm

    thanks–it looks like i was a bit eager and put it into the mold before it was thick enough. but i will try again!

  • Judet

    November 10, 2014 at 10:47 pm

    Hi. I just made this soap a few weeks ago and today I noticed yellow staining on the soap. This is the first time this has happened and I’m wondering if you could help me figure out what caused this. I combined the oils and lye at about 120 degrees Fahrenheit and poured the FO at light traced. The FO accelerated trace and the batch almost seized. I used the Democrat FO, which smells great. Also, when I unmolded the soap and sliced it, the loaf was “sweating”. This is the first time I make soap with salt (I used dead sea salt), so I’m not sure if that is the reason for these things and the yellowing. I appreciate any feedback you could give me. I’m going to try to attach a pic here. Hope it works.

    1. Rebecca D. Dillon

      November 11, 2014 at 8:07 am

      Your temps were too hot when you mixed the soap. Try mixing at 95-100F. This will keep it from seizing. I’ve had mine go from blue to greenish a few times when I mixed hot and/or didn’t use enough pigment.

      1. Judet

        November 12, 2014 at 5:16 pm

        Thanks! I’ll give it another shot using lower temperatures.

  • Jo

    November 23, 2014 at 2:54 pm

    I love the sound of this recipe and can’t wait to try it to make it. What’s the superfat % that was used in the Salt Lick bar recipe.

    1. Rebecca D. Dillon

      November 24, 2014 at 9:20 am

      I’m not positive as this is such an old recipe but it was either 5% or 6%.

Comments are closed.

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