On August 18, 2005, I made a Cranberry Almond soap which turned out, thus far, to be one of my favorites. I've always like cranberries - they're such an unsung berry hero unless it's either Thanksgiving or Christmas time. If it's for Thanksgiving dinner, most people use that gelatinous stuff in a can. Bravo to you if you don't! For Christmas, people don't really eat them, they just buy them to string them up and put them on their tree. Actually, I don't think ANYONE does that anymore. I think people think it's too much work and they wind up skewering themselves on a needle and turning their hands red and moaning about the holiday season and everything they have to do in the coming days (whistles innocently). But cranberries do make a Christmas tree look festive. I'll have to remind myself to buy a bunch of cranberries this winter. If we do nothing else with them, we can make cranberry margaritas to help us forget that we have six months of snow and ice in our forcast. Anyway, back to the soap... My ingredients are as follows:

extra virgin olive oil
palm oil
palm kernel oil
coconut oil
soy shortening
castor oil
fragrance oil
FDA approved colorant

I did this soap using a hot process method. I made the soap batter as usual, and did a small swirl of red (which turned out pink) in the pot and then poured the batter into the mold which gave it a marbled look. However, instead of letting the soap go through it's gel phase sitting in the mold and hardening over the course of weeks, I forced it to cure and harden in the oven. Hyuck Hyuck Yup - I dun cooked it! I was able to cut the loaf into bars the day after and stamped them the day after that. I think the final cure weight averaged around 3.5 ounces.

This turned out to be a very pretty soap with a nice fragrance. I can pick out the almond fragrance over the cranberry. Great conditioning soap too!