Herbal Infusion Soap

Herbal (or botanical) infusion soap is time consuming.  It starts with infusing olive oil with desire dry herbs or flowers.

I usually pile up layers of botanicals in a container first like the left bucket, then fill it up with olive oil and let it sit for months in the dark cabinet.  It looks red on the right because the infusion contains alkanet and gromwell roots for natural color.  Typical botanicals I use: calendula flower, lavender bud, mint leaf, chamomile flower, white willow bark, and green tea leaf.  These are all skin beneficial botanicals though I cannot claim any cosmetic or health benefit or FDA would come after me!

Alkanet root produces natural red color for cold process soap.  Gromwell root is typical in Asia, used in herbal remedy and medicine, but it's difficult to find anywhere else. When infusing gromwell root in oil it would look plum red at first, then turns into purple or blue once the lye solution hits. It produces natural color for cold process soap ranging from plum to purple to blue depending on where and when the root is harvest.  This is how my gromwell infused oil soap, 40% olive oil:

I was hoping to get a real purple but my batch ended up blue...  That's why this time I'm infusing gromwell together with alkanet, maybe next time I will get the purple I want!

Next is a batch of castile soap I made using my herbal infused olive oil.  Castile soap meaning 100% olive oil.  The infused oil came out a pretty dark green, I was hoping that color would survive saponification, but it didn't.  I also pureed fresh mango with heavy cream to make this castile soap even more luxury!  I decided to keep this one unscented, but the natural smell of the botanicals together with the faint but noticeable mango aroma is surprisingly pleasant!