Gingerbread Soap House, 100% Soap

With the holidays coming up, it is always nice to start some DIY projects to knock off the socks of your friends and family! With some supplies, you can make this gingerbread house made 100% out of soap. I should warn you though, this is a long project that requires patience and perhaps practice. If you have made soap before you should definitely give this a try. If you have not, and you are not comfortable with using chemicals, the house can still be made to some extend. Good luck and I hope you will be as impressed with yourself as you should be at the end of this project.

• 1 kg of Olive Oil
• 350 grams of Coconut Oil
• 340 grams of distilled water
• 182 grams of sodium hydroxide
• Some plastic containers with recycle number 2 or 5
• Silicone spatula (1 or 2)
• Stick blender (or regular whisk if you want to train some muscle and have plenty of time ;))
• Around 4 tsp of cacao powder
• Around 1 tsp of Titanium Dioxide
• A piping bag and tip of your choosing
• Gingerbread House silicone mold (available on amazon)
• IR temperature thermometer
• Scale
• EYE PROTECTION ---> SAFETY GLASSES
• Cleaning gloves or latex gloves for protection
• 30-50 grams of Soap Safe Fragrance oil (optional)
• Melt and Pour Soap Base
• Soap safe mica's (optional but recommended)

Before staring anything, it is very important to wear the proper gear for your safety. You will be working with Lye, a solution that could burn your skin or blind you if you're unlucky. At all times when handling soap you should wear clothes that cover your skin, gloves, and safety glasses. In addition, read this section in it's entirety before executing.

Let's get started! We start with preparing our lye solution. To do this, take two of the plastic containers, the sodium hydroxide, scale, a spatula, and the distilled water. In one container, weigh out 260 grams of distilled water. In another, weigh out 140 grams of sodium hydroxide.

Now pour the sodium hydroxide in the distilled water, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND! Use the spatula to slowly incorporate and dissolve the lye into the water. There should be no more parts in the water, it has to be completely dissolved. When mixing, try to be in a well ventilated area, the vapor is not so pleasant to inhale. Set the solution aside. It has to cool down to a temperature between 82-87 degrees Fahrenheit. While the lye is cooling, we move on to the next step.

Now we prepare the second element that will make a soap; melted oils. Olive Oil is already fluid at room temperature, so grab another container (that is big enough to contain all the oils and the lye solution eventually, with some space left), and put in 750 grams of Olive Oil. Set this aside.

In another container, measure out 250 grams of Coconut Oil and melt it down. You can do this on the stove over a bowl of water or in the microwave at 30 second intervals. All the oil has to be melted, no solid parts should be floating anymore. Combine the two oils in one container and mix well with another spatula. The temperature of the oils should be in the same temperature range as the lye (82-87). While the Oils and Lye cool down, clean up the workspace and check on their temperature every now and then. It can take about an hour or more to cool down. If you want to speed up the process, put the containers in a bowl of cold water. If one of the containers cooled down too much, reheat it slowly in a bath of warm water. When everything has the right temperature, let's move on!

With everything at the right temperature, grab the lye solution and pour it into the oils. Mix with one of the spatulas from before a bit. If you want to do the next process by hand, grab a whisk and start whisking! It will take quite a long time, so I recommend using a stick blender instead. Blend the mixture and watch the following processes happen. First, the mixture will form an emulsion. This stage will be achieved when you see there is no more oil on top of the batter and everything has the same color. When you think you have achieved this stage, stop blending and add the cacao powder to the mixture. You can add more cacao powder if you want a darker color. Blend the powder through the mixture. Now you need to look out for the next stage: getting a trace. When you stop blending, lift the stick blender up and let some drops of soap fall in the mixture. If the drops leave a trace on the soap, you have a trace, if it completely disappears, you need to blend for a bit longer. When you reach a clear visible trace, you can add a soap safe fragrance oil and mix it in with a spatula. This is optional, the soap will be nice to use and pretty without fragrance as well. If you have no experience using fragrances in soap I would recommend skipping it.

Now that we have a trace, we have a batter that will turn into soap. Pour the batter into the gingerbread mold and leave it for at least 24 hours. Note: You will have a bit of soap batter left over, you can pour this in another mold, or you can turn it into soap dough (see step 4). After 24 hours the soap will have hardened enough to be taken out of the mold. However, it has not turned into soap just yet. Because of this, if you want to touch the soap at any time, you will need to wear gloves again. After three days, the mixture will have turned into soap. I would recommend leaving the soap in the mold for three days and just leave it be, don't touch it. That way it will be safe to take out without gloves, and it will be even smoother to take out of the mold. Cut off any access of the sides of the soap in case there is any and let's move on to the next step!

Soap Dough is exactly what it sounds like. It is kneed-able soap. This step has to be performed at least one day before you want to decorate your house. What you are going to do, is make another batch of soap as you did for the gingerbread house. However, this time you will use different measurements. These measurements are just to make tinier portions, if you want to make a lot of soap dough, feel free to use the measurements from the house.

• 225 grams Olive Oil
• 75 grams Coconut Oil
• 78 grams distilled water
• 42 grams sodium hydroxide

Now instead of pouring this new batter into a mold, you are going to split it up in containers and mix in different colorants (I recommend soap safe mica's) that you want to decorate your house with. Start with 1/8 tsp of each mica and adjust till you get a color you like. When you are happy with the colors, grab a container that has a closed lid, and cling film. What you want to do is wrap the soap in the clingfilm and close it off so that no air can reach the mixture. So wrap the fluid in foil and then put it in the container with a lid. Leave this for 24 hours and you will have soap dough! Again, use gloves when handling the dough, it is not yet soap.

Now that we have the components of our little house, we can assemble it. For this we are going to use melt and pour soap. Melt and pour soap is perfect for gluing our pieces together because it hardens quite fast. Cut up a couple of blocks of melt and pour and put them in a microwave safe container. Melt it down at 20 second intervals. Now we grab a spoon or pipette or anything else you can find that works and put the melted soap as glue on each part of the house that needs to be glued together. Do this one side at a time and wait for the soap to dry before moving on to the next side. Make sure that all sides are stuck firmly. The inside of the house will not be visible, so don't be afraid if it looks a little messy from all the melt and pour. Now that your house is put together, we can finally start decorating. Also, congratulations for getting this far.

So now we have a standing house, and we have a bunch of colorful soap dough. We are going to make another batch of soap. This time, we take the same measurements as we did with the soap dough, but instead of splitting the batter and adding different colors, we keep it all in one container and just add titanium dioxide (1 tsp), in the same way we added the cacao powder before. When the mixture starts to get thick and has reached trace, we are going to set it aside for a while (check every 15 minutes, I believe it took me 1 hour). I suggest that you use this time to kneed your soap dough and make decorations of them (I made little balls and candy canes for example) After about 1 hour, the batter has gotten so thick, you can scoop out a big chunk without the soap flowing into the gap you created. In other words, it is no longer pourable. When this happens, prepare your piping bag and tip, and scoop the soap mixture into the piping bag. If the soap starts to flow out of the bag without you trying to make that happen, it was not set up enough yet and you will have to wait a bit longer.

Now you have all you need. Grab that piping bag and create some lovely snow on top of that house! This is you can do in any way you like so go nuts. The decorations you made out of soap dough you can glue on by pushing them into the soap frosting or but melting some more soap base (I recommend just using the frosting as glue, I think it it prettier). And there you have it, your own 100% Gingerbread Soap House! Again, be aware that you should be wearing gloves and protective eye wear when handling the frosting or any other soap batter that has not been sitting for at least 3 days. This also means that when you finish decorating, it will take 3 days for your house to be turned into soap completely. Keep this in mind!