Carrot Soap Recipe

Try this carrot soap recipe, where you can color soap with carrots! Would you ever guess that you could color soap with this, or any natural vegetable ingredient? No? If you want to find out how, read this post and follow the recipe!

Try this easy recipe for a homemade natural carrot soap, scented with a citrusy aroma and naturally colored with carrot pureé!

Healthy Carrot!

No one will ever question if carrots are good for your health. It’s common knowledge. Carrot (or Daucus Carota Sativus) is a root vegetable often claimed to be the perfect health food. It is crunchy, tasty, and highly nutritious.

Carrots are a particularly good source of beta carotene, fiber, vitamin K1, potassium, and antioxidants. They also have a number of health benefits. They’re a weight-loss-friendly food and are linked to lower cholesterol levels and improved eye health. What’s more, their carotene antioxidants have been linked to a reduced risk of cancer.

Orange carrots get their bright color from beta carotene, an antioxidant that your body converts into vitamin A. Filled with vitamins, anti-oxidants and a natural colorant – beta-carotene – It’s a great, and common, ingredient in natural soaps. Some vitamins might be destroyed by the saponification process, but I can assure you that beta-carotene does turn your soap yellow, just check out the picture below.

carrot puree

Carrot Soap Recipe

The oils and butters used in this recipe are:

  • Olive oil – very conditioning and smoothing for the skin
  • Coconut oil – makes a soap hard and very cleansing
  • Castor oil – also cleansing but mostly improves foam
  • Sunflower oil – rich in vitamin E and very conditioning, and cheaper than the other oils
  • Shea butter – very conditioning as well and full of vitamins: A, E and F and antioxidants.

We will also use carrots as our natural colorant (yes, you guessed… and nevermind that I might have mentioned 3 times by now). Beta-carotene will give your soap a color between pale yellow to dark yellow/almost orange, depending on the amount of carrots used in the recipe and its quality.

There will be no carrot aroma, and the carrot’s properties as a vegetable will be mostly destroyed in the chemical process, but the color will stay.

With a big amount of liquid oils, this recipe will solidify slowly, so, make sure you use sodium lactate or fine salt. Else, even after 7 days, your soap will still be soft.

How Much Carrot Do You Put In Soap?

Carrot pureé or any other vegetable pureé is added as part of lye water. Meaning you replace part of the water content for the lye water with this pureé. This soap recipe uses 150g of “water” to make the lye water: 100g of water and 50g of carrot pureé. Meaning we use 1/3 of carrot pureé and 2/3 of distilled water.

If you wish to change the amount of carrot pureé in this recipe, you will have to reduce the amount of water. Considering the 450g batch, you can adjust the water:pureé ratio as long as you keep the total at 150g. My next recipe will be with 100% carrot pureé, no distilled water.

carrot-soap-recipe

Find Where to Buy Handmade Carrot Soap

If you’re not yet ready to try to make this recipe at home, but you still wish to enjoy natural soaps, you can find handmade carrot soap at the following links:

How To Use This Soap

In the shower or bath, wet your hands and rub your soap in them to create a lather. Wash your hands first, then repeat the process and apply soap to your whole body using the soap directly and your hands. You may also wash your face with it. Rinse hands and body abundantly. Also wash your soap from lather before placing it in your soap dish or bag saver.

Washcloths and sponges should be avoided. Avoid washing your intimate zone and your hair, soap pH in not adequate for those parts of your body. Avoid eye contact with soap to prevent stinging. Make a patch test before using your soap. Stop using your soap if you feel any immediate adverse reaction in your skin (red skin, rashes, itching).

To take best advantage of your handmade soap (made by yourself or store-bougth), read How Do You Use Handmade Soap?

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Ingredients and Recipes

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Watch This Video About Safety

Cold Process Soap Making Tutorial Video

Cold Process Soap Making Lessons

The tutorials in this blog are a great – and free! – help to start with cold process soap making. Practice is the next step to harness the art of making soaps at home. However, I understand if you prefer to have some formal lessons, where you will feel more supported with the steps. Feel free to join these courses at Udemy.

How To Make Soap – Homemade Soap Making for Beginners – Shona O’Connor

635090 4503show?id=LKzmQGcauXs&bids=1060092
Botanical Skin Care Course Leaderboard1
carrot-soap-recipe

Carrot Soap Recipe

This carrot soap recipe contains olive oil, coconut oil, castor oil and shea butter, which makes a wonderful creamy soap. Scented with May Chang, a lemony aroma. It is colored by a 100% natural ingredient: carrots! Try this recipe and enjoy!
Difficulty: Easy
Weight: 450g (15,84 oz)
Superfat: 5%
Lye Concentration: 30% (considering water and carrot pureé together)
Prep Time: 40 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes
Method: Cold Process
Cosmetic: Soap Bar
Servings: 6 soap bars
Author: Sofia Matias
Cost: $4 – $20 / 4€ – 16€

Instructions

Get Ready!

  • Wear goggles and gloves! Look at “Safety Precautions” in the video above or in Soap Making Safety Precautions
    soap-making-safety-precautions
  • Watch the video above about "Cold Process Soap Making Tutorial" or read the post Learn To Make Cold Process Soap for instructions on cold process soap making before starting. These are generic but important steps for all recipes.
    Pouring essential oils into soap batter
  • Assemble everything: ingredients, equipment, safety equipment. Prepare your workstations. Measure all the ingredients. Don’t start the recipe without having everything ready!
    soapmaking-workspace-preparation
  • Carrot pureé is used as a natural colorant in this soap. It's an optional ingredient. But then again, what's a carrot soap without carrots? 🙂
    carrot-puree

Prepare the Carrot Pureé

  • Prepare some carrot pureé to add to the lye water: peel and slice a carrot and then simmer it in water (just like preparing boiled carrots). When it's soft, remove it from the water and make the pureé with an immersion blender.
    measuring-carrot-puree

Heat the Oils

  • Heat the oils to melt completely the solid oils.
    liquid and solid oils

Prepare the Lye Water

  • The remaining water from the boiled carrot can be used as part of the lye water, but you must use the water ONLY at room temperature.
    boiling-carrots
  • Make the lye solution according to How To Make Lye Water, pouring the carrot purée into the water in the beginning. Mix it until the vapors start to dissipate. The lye water will turn into dark orange-brownish.
    lye water to be made with carrot puree

Make the Soap Batter

  • Use as a target temperature 40ºC for the oil-lye solution mixture. If necessary, you can reheat the oils, but not the lye solution.
    measuring temperatures 1
  • Use a strainer to pour the lye water into the oils. The strainer will catch any remaining bits of carrot and lye.
    Lye and oils in a bowl, unmixed
  • Reach trace with the immersion blender.
    reach-trace
  • Add after trace ingredients: the extract and essential oil (s). Stir with just a spoon.
    adding after trace ingredients

Molding and Curing

  • Pour the dough into the molds using a pitcher and sprinkle with alcohol or witch hazel.
    carrot-soap-molds
  • Wait 48 hours, keeping an eye on the hardness of the soap. Unmold and let the bars cure for 4 to 6 weeks. See How To Cure Soap for more information.
    soap-curing-in-racks
  • Enjoy your carrot soaps!
    carrot-soap-recipe

Video

Tried this recipe?Send a pic to @herbalcochete!

7 thoughts on “Carrot Soap Recipe”

  1. Wow! I love homemade soaps and I would really love to make this! This is going to be a nice project. The curing process is a little long, 30 days. I have no experience with this, so I am guessing that 30 days is normal? What would be the best spot to cure the bars? A dry, shady spot?

    Can I get all the ingredients online?

    • Hello Christine and thank you for your comment.

      Yes, it’s normal for handmade soap bars to cure for 4 weeks (more or less 30 days). It’s a bit of time if you want to try the product right away, but this is worth the wait and 4 weeks actually pass in no time 🙂

      To cure soap, you can check out my article How to Cure Soap, but yes a dry, shady place is a good one. In addition, it should have good ventilation, and bars should be kept with some space between them.

      As for purchasing the ingredients online, at the bottom of the recipe, you have links that show you where to buy each ingredient and also some of the equipment (about the lastest one, before buying anything, check out what you have in your kitchen already). I am assuming you have carrots and water (preferably distilled) available at home 🙂

      Hope you have as much fun as I did making this soap! Let me know how it went!

      Best Regards,

  2. Hi there! Thanks a bunch for sharing this wealth of information with me! Can’t imagine the work you put it to pull this together. Carrot soap really helps in Gently removes deep-seated dirt and oil without stripping your skin of its vital moisture, would love to try this recipe out

    • Hello Rorodote and thanks for your comment.

      Actually, I like soap making a lot and researching the net to know how to make soap, although it takes work, yes, it’s hardly an ordeal for me 🙂 

      I am fascinated with the idea that you can color soap with natural ingredients and this is what this recipe is all about. The color you get with carrot pureé is a pretty yellow, unlike the orange tone we would think at first.

      The carrot itself, apart from giving color, little more does to soap, as most of what you add to soap before saponification is destroyed with the chemical process. Still, what you said about this soap – gently removes deep-seated dirt and oil without stripping your skin of vital moisture – is true, also true for most natural soaps. This soap in particular also has wonderful shea butter to make it especially moisturizing and soft.

      Hope you try and enjoy this recipe!

      Cheers,

      Sofia

  3. It is very thoughtful of you to share this interesting and very resourceful information, if is very helpful to make and it’s been really useful. I always prefer natural products, things that are made of natural components. I’d look forward to having more and more infomercial that are very resourceful and useful like this, thanks for sharing.

  4. 5 stars
    A soap recipe colored only with carrot? That’s even possible? I’ve tried and it works!
    Thanks for posting this recipe.

    • Hello and thanks for your comment.

      Yes, it’s possible, natural carrot colors soap with a pretty yellow. I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed this recipe.

      Cheers,
      Sofia

Comments are closed.