FOR pastry cook Julie Andrews, a recipe book is a wondrous thing, and lots of recipe books even more so.
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When she found an aromatherapy soap making recipe book at a Sunday market stall, “All the heavens opened up.” she says.
“I knew I could bake any cake from a recipe, so making soap was a natural progression.”
The year was 1998, and Julie still remembers the feeling of getting the kids off to school and kindergarten, and the rush to get home to start soap making.
It started as a hobby, but soon even her husband was saying he thought they had enough soap now, and would she please stop.
18 years later Julie is still making soap.
With her dad helping out building racks and shelving for the six week curing process, her friends buying everything she could produce, and her pastry cook career demanding she work odd hours and weekends, soap making as a business was ever more alluring.
Today, surrounded by her professionally packaged soaps - tantalising camel milk, tradies/gardeners, patchouli and lemongrass - Julie reminisces about making her first batch.
“I read the recipe over and over, set aside a day, and with a blue ice cream container for a mould, made a start. I haven’t stopped.
“My first soap had 100 per cent coconut oil, lavender buds, no scent, tank water, and some sodium hydroxide.
“It was pretty lethal stuff so of course I had all the safety gear – gloves, glasses and a mask.”
“You have to wrap it for up to insulate it, then cut it and leave it to cure for four weeks minimum. I couldn’t resist peeking at it. I so wanted to know how it was working out.”
It’s one thing to have a recipe, another to follow it faithfully and safely when you are using caustic soda.
The chemistry must be very specific when measuring soap making ingredients: saponification is a chemical process that requires the correct balance of fats and alkali.
Julie says she has a base of quality oils she uses like olive oil, coconut oil, cocoa butter, hemp seed oil, and macadamia oil, then she mixes the other ingredients in to make a specific soap.
“Recently I was intrigued with the idea of camel milk soap. The milk is so high in vitamins and minerals, and easy to work with. Customers love it.”
She has perfected a unique finish on top of each bar of soap; small pyramid shapes for the camels milk soap, and wax honeycomb shapes for the manuka honey soap, which has great problem-skin loving qualities.
Other successful experiments are the ingredients she uses for her tradies soap, which has a mixture of white sand and coffee grounds. She uses silky smooth silk fibres in yet another recipe.
She sells her products wholesale to a limited range of retailers and at a couple of market stalls each month.
With custom made packaging and a commitment to quality, Julie’s Urthly Organics soaps have wide customer appeal and a loyal following in the marketplace.
Trivia: Soap operas got their name from the wild spends advertising washing powder on the TV programs.