what is superfatting soap

What is superfatting soap? It is about making the soap a little more moisturizing. In theory, the extra oils added at the end, at trace, will be less saponified by the lye and create free-floating oil in the soap that you can feel. I tested this by separating a soap I just made, putting half in a mold, and then adding a superfat (cocoa butter) to the other half. In the finished bars, I could feel a slightly more moisturizing ability. So yes, it does work.

You can see that the soap is at trace (on the right) and a super fat is being added

If you were to add too much superfat, two things may happen. You’ll get a soft bar that never gets hard or a bar that takes months to harden. I had a sunflower bar, scented with orange and lavender essential oils, and superfatted this bar with sunflower oil. Sunflower oil is known to make a soft bar, and this is what happened. Six months later it still wasn’t hardened, but I took these bars to a music festival and sold them all for a dollar a bar. The outside edges of the bars were hardened but that center refused too, lol, could have poked your finger through it, but the festival goers didn’t mind at all!

The superfatting rule is to not go over 5% of your oil content. So if your recipe has a total of 50 ounces of oil, do not exceed 2 1/2 ounces.

Cocoa Butter is my preferred superfat. A little of that went a long way, and I prefer it over the sunflower oil (of course), shea nut butter, and hemp oil.