Welcome to my brand spanking new blog page, courtesy of blogspot! I'm currently re-vamping my website and decided my blog needed a makeover too, so here we are :)
I thought I'd kick off my new blog by showing you an ingredient I recently bought:
Virgin, unrefined, unfiltered cocoa butter!
There's nothing better than finding a new supplier of soapy things, and a few months ago I stumbled upon Fresholi - a soapy supplier of some very interesting things. One thing I came across and really, really liked on Fresholi, was organic palm oil - something I'm very keen on buying to make the most nature-friendly soaps. But the one thing I was really impressed with, was their supply of virgin, unrefined and unfiltered cocoa butter.
I've used cocoa butter before in soaps and it really adds to the lather of the soap in general, but the after effect of it is soothing and gives your hands a silky soft feel. The main difference between regular cocoa butter and the unfiltered, unrefined butter above, is the smell. It smells deliciously of chocolate and has such a beautiful aroma. I often order things to be delivered at my work address, and when this came I had a few people asking me what the chocolate smell round my desk was! (Quite a few of us were tempted to eat it too!) Another difference is that because it's unrefined and unfiltered, all the goodness of the cocoa beans is still in there, antioxidants and all.
On my first visit to Fresholi I only bought a small sample of the cocoa butter, and I have to admit, it stayed in my soap cupboard for quite a long time before I knew what I wanted to do with it. I eventually decided I was going to make a Man Bath soap with it, and formulated my recipe to include the butter. Est voila:
Man Bath: True Grit
So there you have it! A fabulous, all-natural ingredient jam packed into soap :) Do you like using natural ingredients in your soap?