Do more with overripe tomatoes than using them up spaghetti sauce recipes or in canning. Make them into soap instead! Craft your own tomato infused skin care with my natural homemade tomato soap recipe!

Over spaghetti sauce? Use up those overripe tomatoes to make this natural homemade tomato soap recipe!

If you’re like me and had a garden this past summer, then you know how somehow you always end up with too much of one thing and not enough of another. For me, I ended up with too many peppers as they were the only plants that fared well this year. In fact, I still have six plants that are producing and a crisper packed to the top.

On the other hand, I had almost no tomatoes as we got way too much rain this year. Seriously, we were averaging more rain than Seattle at one point. So our tomatoes sort of bit the dust. Since the peppers keep I’m still trying to figure out what to do with them all. But tomatoes, they don’t keep for nearly as long. And while my tomato plants bit the dust, my co-worker’s plants did not and I ended up with a lot of his extras.

Some of which were too ripe to slice without water exploding everywhere. And since I’m far from being a chef I didn’t think spaghetti sauce or salsa. I thought soap. So I created a natural homemade tomato soap recipe that used a few of the ripe tomatoes I had and didn’t know what to do with. (Plus I think Scott was over eating tomato sandwiches everyday. I’m not the biggest fan.)

I’ve made homemade soaps in the past that incorporated ripe bananas in the recipe and they turned out way better than my banana bread ever did. So I figured why not throw some tomatoes into a batch. As it turns out, you can actually sub tomatoes for your entire water content in your own natural homemade tomato soap recipe.

I wasn’t sure how to mix the lye into an entire mess of tomatoes though. Nor was I sure exactly how it would react. So instead I used a little bit of distilled water to dissolve the lye and smashed up tomatoes separately for the rest of the liquid. I also used some basil powder and basil essential oil for a natural scent. Here’s the natural homemade tomato soap recipe I came up with. (And the printable labels too!)

Natural Homemade Tomato Soap Recipe

© Rebecca’s Soap Delicatessen

Ingredients:

1.8 oz. cocoa butter
2.6 oz. shea butter
9 oz. sustainable palm oil
7.2 oz. 76 degree melt point coconut oil
11.8 oz. pomace olive oil
3.6 oz. castor oil

4.9 oz. lye/sodium hydroxide
6 fluid oz. distilled water

1 Tablespoon basil powder
.75 oz. basil essential oil
8.5 oz. pureed ripe tomatoes
1 Tablespoon walnut shell powder

Instructions:

You’ll need to follow your basic cold process soapmaking instructions for this natural homemade tomato recipe. This soap will fit into one of my DIY wood loaf soap molds and will yield approximately 10-11 4.5 oz. soap bars. Take all necessary safety precautions.

Start by measuring out the distilled water, then weigh out the lye using a digital kitchen scale and stir into the distilled water. Set aside to cool in a well ventilated area.

Now weigh out all of the soapmaking oils – cocoa butter, shea butter, palm oil, coconut oil, olive oil and castor oil – and place in large non-aluminum pot. Heat over medium heat on the stove until all of the oils have melted, then remove from heat and set aside to cool.

While the soapmaking oils and lye-water are cooling, line your soap mold and prepare the other ingredients. Weight out the ripe tomatoes and remove stems and leaves, then mash with a fork or similar utensil. If your tomatoes are super ripe you won’t need to use anything else. Set aside. Using separate containers for each ingredient, weigh out the basil essential oil, and measure out the basil and walnut shell powders. Set aside.

Once your ingredients have cooled to between 95 and 110 degrees, pour the pureed tomatoes into the soapmaking oils and mix well with an immersion/stick hand blender. Then slowly pour the lye-water into the soap oils and tomato puree and mix until you reach trace.

Now pour 1/3 of the soap into your mold and tap to level. Evenly sprinkle the walnut shell powder across the poured soap.

Now add the basil powder and basil essential oil to the remaining soap in the pot and mix well with the blender. Once thoroughly combined, slowly pour the remaining soap on top of the first layer of soap and the walnut shell powder. Level the soap as much as possible so the final size of your bars will be consistent. I generally level out the top of my soap using a butter knife. I run a butter knife back and forth along the width of the mold to evenly distribute the soap, then run it back and forth along the length.

Now cover and insulate your mold for twenty-four hours. After the inuslation period your soap is ready to unmold. Remove your soap from the mold and cut into bars. You can use soap cutter as a guide for evenly sized bars. Set the cut bar onto a wax or parchment paper covered surface – or a cooling rack – and allow to cure for at least three weeks before use.

Once your tomato soaps have cured, you can use them immediately or package them. For my soaps, I wrapped them in professional plastic food wrap film– this stuff works GREAT for wrapping soaps and is MUCH cheaper than buying small containers of cling wrap – and then label. I printed out my labels onto blank full page Kraft sticker label sheets and then colored in select areas with permanent color markers. However, they look great in black and white too! {Download my Natural Tomato & Basil Soap Recipe and Printable Soap Labels here.}

For more of my homemade soap recipes be sure to visit Rebecca’s Soap Delicatessen. You can also more of my favorite homemade soap recipes from around the web along with bath and beauty DIY’s by following my boards on Pinterest. Or simply keep up with all of my new blog posts and recipes by following me on Blog Lovin’ and Tumblr as well as on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and G+.