Cold Process Egg Soap Recipe (Step-by-Step Egg Yolk Soap Recipe)
This homemade cold process egg soap recipe is made with egg yolks. Eggs have long offered skin care benefits that include tightening skin, shrinking pores, and calming redness and breakouts. Add eggs to your daily beauty regimen in with this DIY egg yolk soap recipe for natural skin care. Plus get easy tips for making egg yolk soaps perfectly your very first try.
Soapmaking Benefits of Egg Yolk Soap
In cold process soap, egg yolks also help to create a rich, thick lather. If you’re looking for something eggs-stra fun to create this Easter, try making this luxurious homemade cold process egg soap recipe in lieu of – or in addition to – traditional Easter eggs. Making egg yolk soap is easy and fun if you follow a few simple (and easy!) soap making tips.
I love using egg yolks in soap as they make the lather of your soap feel extra rich, creamy and luxurious. Basically another soapmaking fat, the properties of the egg yolks give egg yolk soap a rich, thick lather. Therefore they make a lovely ingredient in any cold process soap recipe in which you want to beef up the lather. (It’s extra dreamy in low cleansing soap bars, too.)
Cold Process Egg Soap Recipe (with Egg Yolks)
© Rebecca D. Dillon
Ingredients:
3.92 oz. palm kernel flakes
3.6 oz. 76° melt point coconut oil
9 oz. sustainable palm oil
10.8 oz. pomace olive oil
4 oz. safflower oil
1.08 oz. castor oil
3.6 oz. rice bran oil
11.5 fluid oz. distilled water
4.9 oz. lye/sodium hydroxide
2 egg yolks
1 Tablespoon white kaolin (cosmetic) clay
2.25 oz. fragrance oil of choice, optional
Soap Making Notes:
Water as % of oils=32%
Superfat/Discount 6%
This homemade cold process egg soap recipe will yield 10-12 bars of soap approximately 4 oz. each depending on how they are cut and fits inside my DIY wooden loaf soap mold.
There is zero egg smell to this cold process egg soap recipe once it has cured. I noticed a slight smell when I first cut my homemade egg yolk soap into bars, however it had completely dissipated by the next day and smelled only like the fragrance oil I’d used for my own batch.
How to Make Egg Soap
To make this homemade cold process egg soap recipe, you’ll need to follow your basic cold process soapmaking method instructions. (If you’ve never made cold process soap before here’s a good, inexpensive beginner’s cold process soap recipe you can try.) Be sure to take all proper safety precautions when working with lye including goggles and gloves.
You’ll need to begin with eggs that are room temperature so I suggest removing your eggs from the refrigerator ahead of starting the soapmaking process. Crack the eggs open and separate the whites and yolk from two eggs. You’ll only be using the yolks for this egg yolk soap recipe so feel free to scramble up the whites in an omelet! Alternately you could simply use one egg in its entirety – both the white and yolk – for a somewhat different result. While egg yolks serve as a fat in a cold process egg soap recipe, the protein in egg whites are believed to have an astringent effect on skin.
Once your eggs have reached room temperature, you are ready to begin the soapmaking process.
Begin the soapmaking process for this egg soap recipe by first measuring out the distilled water in fluid ounces. (Alternately you can use rosewater in place of the distilled water if you’re after a face specific soap.) Pour into a heat safe pitcher. Next, using a digital scale weigh out the lye. Slowly pour the lye into the water in a well ventilated area and stir until all the lye has dissolved. Set aside to cool.
Now weigh out the palm kernel flakes, coconut oil, palm oil, olive oil, safflower oil, castor oil and rice bran oil using a digital scale and combine in a stainless steel pot. Heat until all of the oils have melted, then remove from heat and set aside.
Next weigh out your fragrance oil, if you’re choosing to scent your egg soap, and set aside. (You can also use essential oils in lieu of a fragrance oil, but you’ll want to use half the amount.)
Now measure out the kaolin clay and set aside.
Once the lye-water and soapmaking oils have cooled to around 90°F you’re ready to make this egg soap recipe.
You’ll need to begin by tempering your egg yolks. To do this remove about a cup of oil from your cooled soapmaking oils into a cup or bowl. Add the egg yolks and mix well with a whisk, fork or even a stick blender. Set aside.
Now slowly pour the lye-water into the soapmaking oils. Mix with a stick blender until you reach a light trace, then add the clay, fragrance, and egg-oil mixture. Mix again until the soap starts to thicken again and all ingredients are fully blended into the soap, then pour the soap into your prepared mold.
Lightly cover the soap with cardboard but don’t insulate the soap loaf.
After 24 hours you can unmold your egg yolk soap loaf and cut it into bars. Allow your egg yolk soaps to cure 4-6 weeks before use, then wrap and label as desired.
Create Custom Egg Yolk Soap Recipes
Want to try eggs in your own homemade cold process soap recipe? Give it a try! Just be sure to bring your eggs to room temperature and temper your eggs in your cooled soapmaking oils to avoid an eggy smell or scrambled eggs. Then add the tempered eggs at a light trace in your own custom egg yolk soap recipe.
More Cold Process Egg Soap Recipes
Looking for more cold process egg soap recipes to try? Explore some of my other homemade soap recipes for making egg yolk soaps.
Or give one of these other cold process soap recipes with food ingredients a try!
For more of my homemade soap recipes as well as bath and beauty DIY’s, you can follow me on Pinterest. You can also find and follow me on Blog Lovin’, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Or sign up to receive an email whenever I share a new post!
14 Comments
amanda
April 2, 2015 at 11:30 pm
love this recipe looking forward to tying it!
Linda
April 3, 2015 at 9:06 am
Good morning. Could you tell us if you are have a Pinterest site ? I so love your recipes. Thank you so much.
Rebecca D. Dillon
April 3, 2015 at 12:40 pm
I am on Pinterest. You can find and follow me here.
Susan
April 4, 2015 at 10:55 pm
Will this cut down the shelf life? I have to try it!
Rebecca D. Dillon
April 5, 2015 at 9:09 am
No it won’t since it goes through saponification the same as the other oils in the recipe.
Anne-Marie
April 30, 2015 at 6:10 pm
Thank you for sharing your egg soap. I recently did a ‘secret feather’ egg soap and it turned out great!
Vanessa
June 1, 2015 at 12:28 am
Hi Rebecca,
I too use eggs in my soap recipes and love the final product. It’s that something wonderful that makes your soaps more conditioning. The thing is knowing how and when to add the eggs. They must be tempered before adding. I use milks as well so I temper them into my milks and add to my oils at RT before pouring my concentrated lye solution. Did you know that you got it going on? 😉
Rebecca D. Dillon
June 1, 2015 at 7:42 am
Yes, tempering them is super important. And, obviously, you’ve got it going on too! 😉
Rachel
June 23, 2015 at 1:56 am
Hi Rebecca! Would this be good for face or you don’t recommend it? Do you have a recipe for facial soap bar for dry skin?
Rebecca D. Dillon
June 23, 2015 at 7:21 am
This is fabulous on your face!
priince
August 5, 2015 at 2:51 am
am a beginer in soapmaking i was happy to com across ur site n i wld be glad if u can teach me how to make soap because i intend to be doing a commercial soap supply thanks from prince
Rebecca D. Dillon
August 5, 2015 at 8:38 am
You can find a tutorial to help you get started making soap here. Good luck!
Daniel
March 6, 2016 at 9:00 pm
Hello Rebecca!
Just curious, why bother using coconut oil if egg yolks help create a rich, thick, lather? I plan on making soap using only olive oil as the base. I’ve been researching additives that will help increase lather and hardness (I really don’t want to use coconut or palm oil) and that’s how I came across your recipe. I’m still doing more research, but after reading your recipe, incorporating egg yolk to help increase the lather seems like a pretty good alternative–also sugar! Supposedly 1 tsp per lb of oil will help create a light, bubbly lather with large bubbles 🙂
Anyway, my question to you: How do you determine how much egg yolk to use? Is there a calculation? Like X oz (egg yolk) per lb of oil? Someone said they subtract the egg yolk weight from whatever liquid they use for making the lye solution… Which is obviously not what you did–I added your oils together and you used one egg yolk per 18 oz of oil.
Also, I was reading a thread elsewhere and someone said they simply blend the egg yolk with all the oils prior to adding their lye solution. You said to set about a cup of oil aside, blend the egg yolk into that, then add it along with the additives after the lye solution/oils reach a light trace. Why not just do the aforementioned?
Thanks!
(Sorry if anything came across as “snide”! I’m a newbie to soap making and am genuinely curious 🙂
Rebecca D. Dillon
March 7, 2016 at 7:00 pm
You’ll want to use a soap calc to figure out what properties your soap will have as far as lather. I have heard that corn oil is an inexpensive substitute for coconut oil – a soaper on the market uses corn oil for this purpose in many of her soaps – and helps to create a great lather. Sugar and/or egg alone likely aren’t going to do the trick when compared to soaps make with coconut oil or palm kernel oil. You could try these though in a basic Castile soap recipe – 100% olive oil – and experiment from there. My tutorial on creating cold process soap recipes using a lye calculator can help you see how cleansing your final bars would be based on the oils you are using and is a great starting point.
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