Soapmaker is a free software that lets you safely generate & check soap recipes. The fun part about making your own soap is that you can make it with whatever characteristics you’re looking for – extra conditioning, more bubbles, etc etc.  There are tons of recipes available online, but I would certainly recommend running any recipe through the SoapCalc to verify the oil and lye weights.

Recipes:
Grapeseed & Coconut Hot Process Soap

Hot Process (how-to): 

Tools: 
(please keep in mind you don’t want to use the some container for food-making you do for soap making.  Hit up a thrift store for dedicated soap-making pots & containers)
– Scale that measures to ounces
– Immersion blender
– Pot or crock pot.  Non-reactive, stainless steel is good.
– Glass or hard plastic container (1 for lye, 1 for water)
– Little jar for fragrance oil
– Stirrer for lye & water
– Stirrer for fragrance oil
– Soap molds (a shoebox lined with parchment paper works great)

Start by weighing the Lye and Water separately.  Mix them OUTSIDE, in a well ventilated area.  When they combine, it’ll release a steam that you don’t want to inhale.
Stir the lye into the water, pouring the lye in slowly and mixing as you go. Dumping the lye in all at once will leave you with a sunken disc at the bottom of your jar that’s difficult to break up and mix.
This mixture gets HOT.  Choose your tools thoughtfully.  Thin plastic will become less firm with heat, glass will get hot to the touch.
Once you’ve got it well mixed, it’ll be a bit cloudy.  Leave it sit while you go weigh the other oils.  It’ll clear up in a few minutes.

**This mixture is dangerous.  It’s hot and caustic.  Use gloves.  Keep a spray bottle of 50/50 vinegar & water on hand, and apply if you get some on your skin. The acidity of the vinegar help neutralize the basic lye.

Excepting the fragrance oil, weigh your oils together & melt if needed.  Keep the fragrance separate, that goes in at the end.  Keep the temperatures of your oils as low as possible when melting, you don’t want to introduce your lye to overheated oil.  If you’re on the stove, keep it between 1-3 and let it melt slow.

Now your lye mixture will be clear, and steam won’t be coming off any longer.

I take my pot off the stovetop for the next bit.  You don’t want things to heat up too quickly.  Pour your lye mixture into the oils and get the immersion blender in there.  (Be careful with the blender.  Make sure it stays submerged, don’t splash.  It’s hot oil and lye water you’re mixing.)

Blend for a minute, mix for a minute. Alternate blending with little stirs until the mixture looks like pudding.  It’ll look emulsified, you’ll see it just hold shapes when stirring the blender around.

Now you’re ready for cooking.  Put your pot back on the stove (keeping the temperature fairly low).  Cover the top with plastic wrap, leaving two slits open on the sides for venting.

This part’ll be fairly hands off.  Let it sit and cook, but keep an eye on it just in case something funny starts to happen.  I heated mine up too quick once and it started rising over the pot. I just barely got it into the sink before overflow.

It might start to rise as it’s cooking.  Push it down slowly (kind of like popping a bubble). Lower the temperature if it’s getting too high.

After 30 minutes – 1 hr, you’ll see the edges start to go more amber in color and translucent – looking.  Start stirring every now and again.  Keep stirring as it continues to change texture. It’ll start looking like the texture of mashed potatoes.

When you’ve got full on mashed-potato texture, take it off the heat and mix in your fragrance oil.  Pour into your mold and let it cool down.  I usually let it cool overnight and cut the next day.  I like to put the cut soap into the freezer for a few hours or overnight to get a nice hard set on the bar.  I thaw it out on the counter afterwards, letting it sit until it drys off.

Cleaning is easy because you’ve made soap onto everything.
Make sure to give the lye & water mixing container extra attention to make sure any residue is well rinsed out and neutralized.