One of our favorite things about fall and winter are pumpkins. I know you can grow and/or purchase them year round but Halloween really gets our celebrating in gear. We love the color and shape of the whole pumpkins, use them for decorating, but our favorite part is to eat them, admittedly. This year, I decided to harness some of pumpkin’s power in soap before we baked it all away! You didn’t know it was good for your skin? Let’s explore this together…
Pumpkin has been known for years to be good for our bodies. It provides fiber, magnesium, potassium, antioxidants, and iron just for starters. It is overflowing with alpha- and beta-carotenes which help support skin health. It also has many vitamins including C, E, and B5, which help revive and restore your skin’s health. This is one awesome fruit and tastes great too, in my opinion. But why would I put it in soap instead of my stomach? It has a comforting smell, pretty color, and also leaves your skin smooth and soft – perfect for dry winter months. Why not?
I started with one of our creamier soap recipes and added pureed pumpkin to the mix. As you can see in the picture, it created a gorgeous orange color as it cooked in the crock. (I had a request to make this soap with the hot process method so it cooks for a few hours in a crockpot in that method of soaping.) When it passed the test & was done, I mixed in a wonderful fragrance that includes a touch of cinnamon, clove, slight sweetness of carrot, nuts, pumpkin (of course), and a hint of rum in the background. It created a marvelous harvest scent in one of my favorite soaps of the season. They were cut into large hand bars and average about 5 oz each. We made enough of this batch to share but this soap will probably remain in our fall/winter lines so grab it before it goes away!
As you can see in the pictures, pumpkin soap provided another chance for us to enjoy color morphing that is so common in natural soap making. No colors were added at all to this batch, for those who find that an issue. The soap started with this pretty burnt orange color while cooking, muted to a tan-orange by the time it finished cooking, and then started a gradual browning from the little bit of vanilla in the fragrancing. As you can see, at 24 hours its colors resembled banana nut bread. By four days later, I had mostly brown bars with beautiful dark chocolate-colored swirls throughout it. The entire soap is dark caramel swirl color now and it hasn’t darkened anymore at this point. What fun!
As of posting time, I’m still fighting to get these pictures loaded for you to see. If you can’t see the pictures, please check back again later! Have another soapy idea or challenge for us? Contact us and let’s brainstorm! I must now get back to the kitchen and wash a few molds before I start these other soaps this week. Ready to cook this week will be Peppermint and another batch of our beer soap, Texas Suds. Check back in with us later this week to see the update on our Honeysuckle Soap and don’t forget to sign up to follow our blog here or like us on Facebook for the latest updates!
Happy Washing!
Dorothy
Finished updating on Dec 11, 2012 at 10:29am CST with all pictures loaded and better description of final color. -Dorothy