Alternative for Palm Oil

by Wendy
(Cape Town)

I want to make your almond oil soap, but cannot find Palm Oil in South Africa. With what can I substitute this? Thanks!

Answer:

Visit my page on Soap Making Oils and scroll down to the heading "Love That Creamy Lather".

You will find many options to use instead of palm oil. Lard can be substituted right in without using a lye calculator because it has an almost identical SAP value as palm oil. The rest will require inputing into a lye calculator to figure out the proper amount of lye needed.

Be careful with cocoa butter...30% is too much to use in a recipe and will likely send the soap base right to a sieze. Using 5-10% is a good amount for this oil.

Shea Butter would be another good choice or even a combination of any of the oils on that page.

Just remember to run the new recipe through a lye calculator to get the right amount of lye needed.

Good luck,
Cathy

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Alternative for Palm Oil

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Grainy Palm Oil
by: Jane

Kathy,

To get rid of the graininess of Palm Oil, do you think it would help to blend it with a stick blender prior to melting it? I seem to remember you or another commenter suggesting this option in order to turn out a smoother bar of soap. If it wasn't on your site, do you have any ideas how to get a smoother bar?

Thanks

Answer:

Not sure what you mean by a smoother bar?

Sorry,
Cathy

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Palm oil - Wendy South Africa
by: Loraine

Hi Everybody
In answer to Wendy (South Africa) about Palm Oil. You can buy this at some of the hyper stores in South Africa. I'm not sure if I am allowed to give their name on this comment. So you can mail me at news.loraine@gmail.com and I will happily supply the name of the store where I bought mine.

Interesting thing about palm oil (I buy the food grade palm oil for soap making). Food grade palm oil is bleached (not sure how they do it). When you buy the food grade palm oil, it looks similar to coconut oil - white. When you use it in soap making, the original red colour of the palm fruit tends to return. Just depends on whether you use it on its own or whether you use it with other oils, butter or waxes. I like the properties of soap made with palm oil.

Hope this is of some help to you.

Regards
L.

Answer:

Please feel free to publish the name of the store you got your supplies from. That's what this site is all about...helping each other learn how to make soap.

Thanks for your input,
Cathy

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Who needs Palm Oil?!?
by: Mighty Mama

Hi,

I also live in South Africa and have been battling to find Palm oil anywhere except from online stores which then cost extra due to P&P. I recently discovered that it is totally do-able to make beautiful soap using just coconut oil and olive oil. Check out www.soapcalc.com to fine tune your recipe and don't forget to add in some yummy cocoa or shea butter for extra moisturizing! Palm oil harvesting is very damaging to the environment so you would be doing yourself and your surrounds a favour if you just left it out :)

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