Begin by watching the Castile soap making video if possible.

Wearing kitchen gloves, mask, glasses/safety goggles, closed toe shoes and pants, bring your lye and water outside if possible, or by a kitchen fan or open window. We measure them outside to just make sure its all done outside.

Measure your lye into a glass, plastic or stainless container. Something non reactive.

Measure your water into a glass or stainless container.

Pour your LYE into your WATER and stir with a stainless steel/non reactive spoon. SNOW falls on a LAKE, is how you remember. If done in the opposite way, you could create a little explosion.

Stir until well combined, and then put somewhere safe from kids and pets to cool.

Measure your olive oil into a stainless steel pot, and gently warm it up. You want it to be warm but not hot. Technically its between 100 and 110F. Feeling the side of the pot it will feel nice and warm but not so hot that you cant hold your hand there.

When the lye/water solution has cooled down so that you can hold your hand against the side and its warm but not so hot you cant hold your hand there, you’re ready to go!

Pour your lye/water solution into the olive oil, and using an immersion blender, blend until the soap reaches trace. Trace means the mixture has become like pudding and you can “trace a line” in it and it doesn’t go away. You don’t want to get it super firm. If you were comparing it so baking and whipping egg whites, it wouldn’t be at soft peaks stage yet.

At trace, stir in essential oils if you’re using them, and then pour into your prepared mold (see notes).

Give the container a light tap on the counter to get out any bubbles. Cover the exposed part with wax paper or parchement paper, and then cover the whole thing with a towel. I put it on a cookie sheet to make this easy to move.

After 2-3 days, take your soap out of the mold, then slice it into whatever size bars you’d like. If the soap seems soft or sticking to the cutting tool, stop cutting and put it back to keep sitting another day or two.

Now its time to put your soap to cure! You can put it on a tray covered with parchement/wax paper, or in a box, give the bars space between each other to breathe and allow air flow.

Put the tray/box up out of the way and now the hard part…you’re going to need to forget about Castile soap for a good 6-8 weeks before you can use it. Some say 3-6 months…but who has that sort of patience?