How did we get here?

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.

You might call me a charter member of the handmade soap crowd.  I started making cold process soap to sell in rural Iowa back in the late 70's and early 80's, way before it was considered cool.  In fact it bordered on rather weird at the time.  "You make what?!"  Among the earliest handmade soap crafting enthusiasts of that era, we were probably the only seriously marketed handmade Iowa soap, our beloved Iowa being frequently described as the middle of nowhere.  Most of the real action was on the east and west coasts.  From the very beginning, we called our little creations Soapcakes.  We coined the name because historically, bars of soap were frequently called cakes of soap since the early pioneer women usually hand cut them into cake-like chunks.

There were almost no books on the art of soap making at home and certainly no internet or personal computers.  I actually used the public library for my research.  Can you imagine such a thing?  Those dedicated librarians were so helpful and encouraging to me in my sudsy pursuits.  I developed primitive artisan soap recipes with a pencil, paper and the simplest of calculators.  The earliest wrappers for my hypoallergenic soap were typed on a typewriter, cut into little pieces with a scissors so I could arrange them the way I wanted them and then pasted back together with glue.  I cleaned them up with a nifty new product call Liquid Paper.  I finally ran the finished Soapcakes cold process soap labels off on the library coin-operated Xerox machine at 10 cents per sheet and cut them nice and straight on the library paper cutter.  Ah yes, the "olden days."  Today I could do the same tedious week long process in less than an hour on my computer at home.

My very first cold process soap was made the old fashioned way.  I rendered down rough chunks of beef fat from the butcher in a huge stainless steel pot on my kitchen stove.  It crackled, sputtered, billowed and smoked and made a ridiculously smelly, greasy mess by the time it was done.  But I cooked and lifted, poured, strained and purified and eventually ended up with a lovely little container of nice white tallow.  I was so proud.

Lye was purchased from a drain cleaner company at the time and sold in almost every grocery store, before it was eventually deemed too dangerous for the general public.  Following a cold process soap recipe I found in an obscure little book, I set out on a new adventure to make my all natural artisan soap treasures.  I dutifully mixed everything according to the recipe, poured the thick mass into a cardboard box lined with a plastic garbage bag, covered it with a couple of wool blankets and waited impatiently for the unveiling of my new Iowa soap 24 hours later.

It was like magic.  There they were.  Beautiful, white, firm little bars of cold process soap that didn't suds well and smelled a little like the animal from which they came.  But I didn't care.  This was SO cool!  I was smitten.

Perfecting a bar of cold process soap became my passion.  Although I allowed my very first artisan soap bars to be crude and rustic, I soon focused on specializing in hypoallergenic soap that would be particularly natural and kind to the skin.  I committed to never using anything but pure essential oils and colorants from nature to scent and color my Soapcakes.  Eventually I also switched over from animal fats to all vegetable oils, being much more reliable and pleasant for the commercial selling of all natural cold process soap.

For two decades we paddled along in the sudsy stream of life, selling Soapcakes by word of mouth, in retail stores, to wholesale customers and through fairs, shows and other special events.  I experimented continually with new cold process soap recipes, improving lather, inventing proprietary new essential oil blends and trying innovative molding, cutting and packaging techniques.  In 2003, we launched our first website  and officially joined the 21st century.

Several years ago I implemented the first fundamental change in Soapcakes since their invention.  I decided to completely reformulate all my recipes to specifically exclude the major allergens of gluten, dairy, soy, corn, oats and eggs.  And except for the coconut oil and shea butter we use, we also eliminated all other nuts from our recipes as well.  Soapcakes would now be a gluten free soap and hopefully useful to those with many other significant sensitivities as well.

Then two years ago, I decide to take an even greater leap forward in Soapcakes quality and change to all unrefined, virgin and certified organic oils and butters.  These are premium, top-of-the-line gourmet oils, brimming with antioxidants and other skin-loving nutrients.  We now had the privilege of producing gluten free soap at a level of quality rarely seen.  Our new superfatted hypoallergenic soap lines would include virgin coconut oil soap and extra virgin olive oil soap along with a skilled blend of both.

Today, we remain very excited about the wonderful changes we have made in our Soapcakes.  Gluten free soap, hypoallergenic soap and artisan soap made at this level brings the art of handmade soapmaking to glorious new heights...because we think it truly matters what you put on your skin.