The Coconut Experiment

Is it possible to have too much coconut in soap?!

Nah!

The soap I’m dreaming of is chock full of coconut: coconut oil, coconut milk, coconut butter and coconut flour. Yes, I could just buy the coconut milk, coconut butter and coconut flour…but where is the challenge in that?!  For this soap, I’m going to try making the coconut milk, coconut flour and coconut butter…and it all starts with this:

 

In fact, besides water, this is the only ingredient you will need to make the coconut milk, coconut flour and coconut butter.

First, I measured 2 cups (1 package) of unsweetened coconut in 4 cups of water and let it sit overnight. This mixture will be the basis for my coconut milk and coconut flour:

After it soaked overnight, I put the mixture in a blender and blended it for a few minutes, until it was creamier. It won’t be smooth, but that’s okay:

I strained the blended coconut mixture through cheesecloth. I laid my cheesecloth in a strainer over the bowl:

See that pulp that’s getting caught in the cheesecloth? I’m going to use that to make my coconut flour.

Now, wrap up that cheesecloth and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze!

You want to squeeze out as much liquid as possible and set aside the pulp. Just to give you an idea, this is how much coconut milk came out of 2 cups of shredded coconut and 4 cups of water:

Next, I spread the pulp that was left in my cheesecloth onto a thin layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet, making sure to break up any lumps:

I baked the coconut pulp at 170 degrees F for 45 minutes, then checked it to see if the coconut felt dry. It was still damp, so I put it back in the oven for 15 minutes at a time, until it felt dry enough. Once it felt dry, I removed it from the oven to cool. Here it is out of the oven:

To make the coconut flour, I blended the dried coconut pulp with my stick blender, you could also use a food process or Vitamix for this step. Mine didn't get powdery, like AP flour, but it did get finer:

To Make Coconut Butter:

I started out by processing 2 cups of unsweetened coconut in my food processor:

 Here it is at 5 minutes, you can already see from the side that the coconut is starting to break down and release the oils:

And after 10 minutes of processing:

By this point, I’d had to stop the food processor too many times to scrape down the sides, and it didn’t seem to be doing a very good job of moving all of the coconut around. Perhaps I didn’t use enough coconut for my size of food processor; however, not to be deterred, I pulled out my trusty stick blender, hoping it would be quicker:

This is just a minute or two of stick blending:

And another minute or two, and it went very quick with the stick blender:

I kept blending until it was smooth and creamy, it took less than 5 minutes. It still looked lumpy, but when I spread it against the side of the container there were no lumps. It looked like this when it was finished:

Next time, I would skip the food processor and just use my stick blender. Of course, if you were going to eat the coconut butter, you should use your food processor or your food-dedicated stick blender!

I poured the coconut butter into ice cube molds to freeze it. That way, I can just unthaw an ice-cube sized piece (about 1 tbsp) of coconut butter to add at trace into my soap. I also froze the coconut milk in ice cube molds, that way I can measure out what I need as I need it. I’m storing the coconut flour in a glass jar.

Coconut Milk: Measure 2 cups (approximately a 200 g package) of unsweetened shredded coconut into 4 cups of water. Let mixture sit overnight, blend in a blender and then strain through cheesecloth to remove the coconut pulp.  

Coconut Flour: Spread the leftover pulp from the coconut milk in a thin layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake at 170 degrees F for at least 45 minutes or until the coconut feels dry. Cool and then blend in food processor, Vitamix or with a stick blender until powdery.

Coconut Butter: Measure out 2 cups (approximately a 200 g package) of unsweetened shredded coconut and process in food processor or blend with with stick blender until creamy and smooth.

Would I go through the trouble of making these again? I’m not sure, but I have enough coconut butter, coconut milk and coconut flour for a few test batches of soap, and it was a fun experiment. I may try making these again, but this time for use in baking :)

I found the instructions for making these on a few different sites, the main ones I followed were here, here and here.  

Next, I’m planning to make a soap with all of this coconutty goodness! Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed my little coconut experiment :)

Update: You can see the finished soap here: Coconut Facial Salt Bars