Soap with teas and oil infusions

I like novelty and I guess one of the things that I like most about soap making is the endless possibilities to experiment.  I sometimes get almost an itch to make soap.  Most often late at night and usually I'll have had an idea that I need to test immediately.  One evening I was rummaging in the cupboards and came across my Celestial Seasoning teas.  They are made in Boulder, Colorado where I used to live, way back in the old days.  Wonderful place!  Tension Tamer and Sleepytime are favorites and I just had to try to use those in a soap recipe.  How lovely to sip the tea in the bathtub using a soap made with the same herbs, both as tea and infused oil.

This is what I made.  It turned out to be one of my "everything but the kitchensink" recipes.  The soaps are lovely, they retained the scent of the herbal tea in a very gentle way.  The colour is a yellow tone.

This is a small recipe, only 313 g / 11 oz.
The figures are a bit strange because I just sloshed this that and the other thing on the scale and wrote it down.  I use grams, the oz. come from the Soapcalc lye calculator.  I suggest to always double check all recipes by running it through a lye calculator.

33.5%  Coconut oil  -  105 g / 3.7 oz
32%  Almond oil  - 100 g / 3.5 oz
12%  Lard  -  38 g / 1.34 oz
8%   Sunflower oil  -  25 g / 0.9 oz
4.8%  Avocado   -  15 g / 0.5 oz
2%  Castor oil  -  10 g / 0.35 oz
2%  Jojoba wax  - 10 g / 0.35 oz
2%  Shea butter  - 10 g / 0.35 oz

45 g / 1.6 oz of lye.

For the water I used 4 tea bags in 110 g / 3.7 oz of water and infused it until cold.
I also cut up 4 tea bags and poured sunflower oil over it.  This I heated up gently over hot water and let it infuse for about an hour.

I have already made tea with the Sleepytime tea and the oil has been infusing at room temperature for a few weeks, so that one I need to make soon to see what difference there is.  Then there are all the other teas that I haven't tried.  I am determined to try a licorice tea and maybe Roobois and ...

The photo: Almond oil and avocado oils really are nice in soap. I use them in facial soaps and also in face creams. The glass thing was my grandmothers and I never knew what it was for when I was a child, but it is to hold flowers nicely arranged in a vase.

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