Vanilla Soap Recipe

You can make vanilla soap only with a fragrance, as there is no vanilla essential oil. Although soap supply companies go to great lengths to make their synthetic fragrance sound like a true essential oil. They’ll use terms like “nature identical”. Most people love the scent of vanilla, and often this scent is added to other scents, such as raspberry, sandalwood, lavender, and orange. This is a great selling bar and I have also made a lotion scented with Vanilla that sells well also.

A very nice bar of vanilla soap

make vanilla soap:

Basic #1 with Canola/Olive, and Coconut oils (no palm oils):

51.2 oz of Canola/Olive oil blend
12.8 oz of coconut oil
23.4 oz water
8.7 lye crystals
for the scent:
5 T vanilla fragrance oil
for coloring:
none, but read below

The soap image below is showing the vanilla fragrance oil and how it turns brown. At first, when you cut it, it will be a light neutral soap base color. As it cures, it browns. Like in the second image below:

You can make vanilla soap with fragrances that come in 2 different types, one is a non-dis-coloring version that does not turn a dark brown when curing, and the other will cure and leave your soap a dark brown. It is our idea of what vanilla is, we often picture it white like in ice cream, or brown like the vanilla pods. Your decision may also depend on the scent, as maybe the perfect scent is a dis-coloring version. Also, maybe you plan to mix scents and a dis-coloring brown would not be good with a lavender-vanilla soap.

Here’s a completely different way to make your vanilla soap. This one looks like ice cream, with the 2 white-ish layers and a sprinkling of cocoa powder on top. Nice label too.

Great article on the vanilla fragrance oil vs vanilla essential oil choices – basically there is no vanilla essential oil, and this article explains why.