Blogs

Cinnamon smells warm and yummy!  And in our gluten free Cinnamon Stick Soapcakes we have managed to include just enough pure cinnamon and cassia essential oils to achieve that glorious fragrance, while carefully staying beneath the level that would impact our inherent creamy gentleness. It is lovely comfort food for the skin.

Cold process soap making involves the blending of three ingredients: fat, lye and water.  But there is also a fourth ingredient called additives. Additives can provide color, scent, longer shelf life and skin-loving attributes to the finished product. If we examine these four elements for gluten cross contamination possibilities, we find that it is indeed possible to handcraft a bar of cold process soap that is unsafe for gluten sensitive people.

Over the past 1000 years or so, the lowly bar of handmade artisan soap has been much maligned.  Early medieval church leaders, in their quest for humility, decided that cleanliness was a sin and banned it altogether.  They may have had a point.  Thirty or forty years without bathing might make anyone rather humble.

Living with multiple food and environmental sensitivities can be challenging, a real game changer.  It can cost you a lot of extra money, as well as take a lot more of your valuable time.  And something as basic as finding an honestly safe bar of gluten free soap for your family can become rocket science.    

I admit it.  I'm a perfectionist.  But after crafting cold process bars of gluten free soap for 30 years, I have come to realize that when it comes to appearance, handmade and perfect seldom go together in the soap business. Every batch of cold process soap has a mind of its own requiring skillful manipulation by the artisan.  Of course, the allure of handmade anything is that it looks, well, handmade. And that can be refreshing in a world of predictable assembly line goods.

Patchouli evokes a definite response in most people.  Folks seem to either love it or hate it.  And they are frequently married to each other!  But for those who are passionate about patchouli, our Patchouli Rose gluten free soap is an amazing artisan soap creation.

Lavender has remained one of the most beloved cosmetic fragrances of all time.  Our classic cold process Lavender Linens soap has been one of our best sellers for nearly 3 decades.  And our recent decision to turn it into a hypoallergenic gluten free soap as well has made it even more popular with our customers.  There is just something about the spicy, floral scent of fresh lavender that produces a real sense of calm and belonging.  

Gluten free soap, artisan soap, virgin coconut oil soap, extra virgin olive oil soap, hypoallergenic soap and whatever soaps are all instruments for cleansing the body.  But if mere cleansing is what a person is after, then cheap commercial bar soaps and detergent-based liquid and bar soaps remain abundant throughout the marketplace.  These high-tech manufactured commercial soaps do indeed accomplish their cleansing tasks, but at what cost to human skin?  

Gluten free soap is a relatively new kid on the block.  When the scientific and medical communities in America finally determined for themselves the secret cause of puzzling symptoms in some very ill folks, we began to see gluten free products showing up in the marketplace.  But because gluten molecules are too large to penetrate the skin barrier, gluten free soaps weren't among those first products to appear.  In fact, there was a rather heated discussion surrounding the subject for quite awhile.

My wise webmaster says I need to blog about the historical creation of Soapcakes.

Blog.  Isn't that word interesting?  It's amazing how in just a few short years, what was once the sound of a bucket of glue being poured out onto the sidewalk has now become an upscale description of the musings of thousands of poetic souls crying into the internet wilderness.  How charming.