Creamy Body Wash Recipe

My husband travels a lot!! For the past two years he has been on and off the planes more than he did his entire life!! I used to collect the small soaps as souvenirs to display in the bathroom, so he will bring me small soaps from every trip. Now I have such a collection, that  they don’t fit in any display basket! Action was called for!

I started using them, but they are so small that in a few days you end with up with an unusable soap and in the trash it goes!  So I decided to google what can they be used for. Have I told you lately what a good and likable friend Mr. Google is?  It is amazing what you can learn from the internet!

As soon as I started googling I entered into a world that I didn’t know existed!!! Did you know that it is very simple and CHEAP to do your own hand and body soap??  I didn’t! I was content buying my expensive body wash! 

So I started looking for what to do with my sample soaps and in the process discovered a gold mine! I discovered how to prepare my own Dove Body Wash! There are a lot of recipes out there and the variation of the water used to prepare the body soap is huge, but all agree that the water used with the Dove soap is on the lower end.

So far I have prepared this creamy body wash twice. The first time the body wash was too thick for our liking but the second time with some adaptations to the recipe it was great; not too thick nor thin!!!  And, I not only doubled it, but quadrupled it! I can guarantee you that I will be preparing this a lot in the future and experimenting with different soaps and scents. 

Yeah, I know, I showed you my picture of all my mini soaps and you thought that is what I will be preparing! I did end up preparing a hand wash with them and we are using it as I am writing this post but I still haven’t nailed down the exact portion of soap to water that I like so that post will have to wait. What I discovered from the three times I cooked liquid soap is that there is a big difference between using the Dove creamy soap bars that contain about 1/4 moisturizer and the other soap bars. The creamy ones need much less water.

Creamy Body Wash Recipe

Prep time: 10 min                 Cook time: 25 minutes

Ingredients:

(recipe is for 1 average soap bar of 100 grams (3.5 oz))

100      grams (3.5 oz) Dove creamy bar soap
600      ml (20 oz) water   (increase up to 650ml (22oz) for a more liquidy body wash)

How to make Creamy Body Wash:

• Grate all the soap.

• Place the grated soap soap in a big pan, add the water. Open the fire and heat until it boils, mixing every 5 minutes. Once it boils, simmer for 5 to 10 minutes max (until you notice that all the soap has melted). Mix occasionally. Note: As you are heating the soap half cover the pan (as you see in the picture) to reduce water evaporation so that you don’t have a thick body soap.

• Set aside to cool (uncovered). When you first remove the soap from the heat you will notice that it is liquidy. don’t be tempted to boil it more, body wash will solidify as it cools. 

• Once your creamy body wash is cools, fill it in soap bottles or dispensers.

Tip: You can opt instead of grating the soap to melt it in the microwave (it won’t become liquid when it melts just soft and bubbly). If you melt in the microwave, you need to boil the water before you pour the melted soap in it!  And still you will notice that some of the soap will solidify when you pour it in the boiling water, so simmer (half covered) until all the soap dissolves mixing every few minutes.

I prepared the creamy body wash both ways and I liked the grated soap more. What I found is that when using grated soap it dissolved faster and needs less mixing.

Hope you enjoyed today’s easy recipe: Creamy Body Wash. Although it is not edible, it is very economical. A simple calculation shows you save at least 85%.

I made my Creamy Body Wash using 4 bars (cost $3) which yielded about 2 liters of body wash. Each bottle, which is a little less than 500ml, costs about $7. So the cost of the body wash I prepared is about $28.  (Cost is according to prices in my country).

اضغط الرابط لقراءة وصفة عمل سائل الاستحمام دوف باللغة العربية

Update February 2013: Since I posted this Creamy body Wash Recipe, I have experimented with several different soaps including soaps that were identified as creamy. Nothing worked as well as Dove creamy bar soap. All the other soaps required much, much more water, and I didn’t particularly cared for the consistency of the resulting body wash.