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Trying to make a batch of soap just for the fun of it, I came across a comment in another thread http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/800236/
where it says pumpkin will give a bright orange color to soap. I got a lot of pumpkins this year, so could anyone please elaborate on that ?
"Pumpkin Pie Soap
Let me just say, this is one of my favorite soap recipes. The coming of fall is signaled by many things...one of which is making a batch of my famous pumpkin pie soap. It uses real pumpkin and pumpkin pie spice and fills the house with wonderful spicy fall scents.
To make this recipe you'll need:
* A Basic Soap Recipe
* Pumpkin fragrance oil or essential oil blend
* Pureed fresh or canned pumpkin
* Pumpkin pie spice
* Basic understanding of Cold Process Soap Making
For this particular recipe, I used my Grocery Store Soap Recipe, sized up to make a bit over 4.5 lbs.
* 15.3 oz. Lard
* 15.3 oz. Olive Oil
* 12.8 oz. Coconut Oil
* 2.5 oz. Castor Oil
* 5.1 oz. Sunflower Oil
* 3 tsp. of sugar in the water before the lye
* 1.5 tsp of salt in the water before the lye
* 3 oz. of canned pumpkin
* 2 tsp. of pumpkin pie spice
* 2.2 oz of Pumpkin Pie fragrance oil
* 7.2 oz. Lye
* 11.5 oz. of water (discounted 3 oz. to make up for the pumpkin)
Get all of your ingredients and equipment ready (including pre-measuring out all of your additives) and let's get started!
continuation of recipe can be found here:
under: "Index: Pumpkin Pie Soap"
The link is very useful because in the various stage photos it demonstrates very well how and why everything is done.
Yet, my question is answered very gradually with knowledge accumulating from several sources: My aim is not to make a soap that will look and smell like something we eat; I want to add pumpkin for its skin softening etc properties, so it will have to be raw (pulped) fresh pumpkin, and in all the sites I went and looked there is no mention as to how much pumpkin pulp will have to go in relation to how much total oil/fat. Here I got an idea that it is a 3oz pumpkin can for a total of 50oz fats, and this makes it 6% of fat weight. On the other hand, I kept reading about soap making, and found that the percentage of water in the recipe will only affect the curing time - a wet soap will cure much later.
