Honey and Shea Butter Soap

Last updated: October 2026

Shea butter soap recipe: Baraka's honey and shea butter cold process bar

Four oils, lye, water and honey. Baraka's shea butter soap recipe is a cold process honey soap made from 1 lb (454 g) of unrefined shea butter, coconut oil, olive and castor oils and 1/4 cup (60 ml) of honey, using shea butter handmade by the women of the Konjeihi Women's Enterprise Centre in Ghana. It makes about 4 lb (1,814 g) of cured soap, 8 to 10 bars, for everyday washing with a creamy lather and a sweet, natural scent.

The bar suits dry or sensitive skin because shea butter gives it a rich, conditioning feel, and the honey adds sugars that help the lather. The full method, the lye calculation and the safety steps are all below. The fundamentals of cold process soap with shea are set out in Baraka's guide How to Make Shea Butter Soap, and this recipe adds honey to that base.

In This Recipe:

• Honey and shea butter
• What This Recipe Is For
• Why Make This Yourself
• Why These Ingredients Work Together
• Ingredient by Ingredient
• Before You Begin: Soap-Making Safety
• Ingredients
• How to make shea butter soap
• Directions
• Homemade shea butter soap
• Shea butter soap making
• Troubleshooting
• Storage and Shelf Life
• Scaling and Substitutions
• Customisation Ideas
• Essential Oils
• Application Tips
• What We Know and How We Know It
• Try These Next
• Disclaimer

Honey and shea butter: what each one does in this soap

Conditioning from the butter, lather from the honey. In Baraka's honey and shea butter soap, 1 lb (454 g) of unrefined shea butter gives the bar its creamy, conditioning feel, and 1/4 cup (60 ml) of honey adds natural sugars that boost the lather and a gentle sweetness to the scent.

The honey goes in at the end, at light trace, just before the soap is poured into the mould. Baraka's shea butter is unrefined and made by hand by women's producer groups at the Konjeihi Women's Enterprise Centre in Wa, Ghana.

• Intense moisturization: shea butter provides deep hydration, leaving the skin soft, smooth and well-nourished.
• Moisture retention: honey acts as a natural humectant, helping to draw moisture into the skin and keep it hydrated.
• Gentle feel: honey and shea butter give this soap a mild, creamy feel.
• Natural honey: honey is a traditional soap ingredient that adds a sweet, natural scent.
• Simple ingredients: honey and shea butter sit alongside coconut, olive and castor oils in a simple cold process recipe.
• Luxurious lather: this soap creates a rich, creamy lather that feels indulgent and leaves the skin feeling pampered.

What This Recipe Is For

An everyday bar with a creamy lather. This recipe makes a firm cold process bar for daily washing that feels conditioning rather than tight. For the wider picture of what you can make with shea, the Definitive Guide to DIY with Shea Butter sets out the other recipes and methods this one belongs to.

• Everyday hand and body washing with a dense, creamy lather
• A gentle, unscented bar for people who prefer soap without essential oils
• Washing dry or sensitive skin that feels tight after detergent bars
• A warm, honey-toned bar to give as a hand-made gift once fully cured
• A first additive soap for makers who have made a plain shea butter soap and want to learn how sugars behave in a batch

Why Make This Yourself

Intermediate, about 45 minutes, about 4 lb of soap. The hands-on work takes about 45 minutes, followed by 24 to 48 hours in the mould and a 4 to 6 week cure. The batch makes about 4 lb (1,814 g) of cured soap, 8 to 10 bars depending on how thick you cut them.

Skill level: intermediate. If you have never handled lye, make a plain shea butter soap first, because honey makes this batter heat up and thicken faster than an unscented base. With its sweet, natural scent and creamy lather, this soap recipe is a wonderful addition to any skincare routine, leaving your skin feeling soft, smooth and pampered.

A bar you make yourself carries exactly the oils, honey and 5% superfat listed here, and nothing you did not choose. The comparison with a commercial bar is one of composition: this one is built from four oils chosen for hardness, lather and conditioning, with honey as its only additive, and all the glycerin the soap-making reaction produces stays in the bar.

Why These Ingredients Work Together

Hardness, lather and conditioning, in balance. The four oils split the work of making a good bar, and the honey adds to the lather they produce.

By weight the oils sit at one third shea butter, one third coconut oil and one sixth each of olive and castor oil. Coconut oil at about 33% of the oils gives a hard bar with a quick lather, and the shea butter and olive oil balance it so the bar does not feel squeaky or drying. Castor oil holds the lather together, and the 5% superfat, explained under shea butter soap making below, helps the bar feel conditioning in use.

Honey's sugars help the lather foam, which is why honey soaps often feel creamier in the hand. A soap is rinsed off, so the honey's part here is in the feel and lather of the bar while you wash.

Ingredient by Ingredient

Seven ingredients, each with one job. Every ingredient in this soap is there for hardness, lather, conditioning, scent or the chemistry that turns oil into soap.

• Shea butter: the base of the bar and the reason it feels conditioning. Because the whole recipe is built on shea butter, Baraka's Raw Shea Butter is the one to use: it is unrefined, strained and filtered only, with no refining, bleaching or deodorising, so its natural colour, which varies from batch to batch between ivory and pale yellow, and its mild nutty smell, which is normal, can carry faintly into the soap.
• Traditional coconut oil: the main cleansing and lathering oil. Baraka's coconut oil is pressed from the fresh coconut kernel in Ghana's coastal coconut belt and left unrefined, and in soap it contributes hardness and abundant lather.
• Olive oil: a mild liquid oil that softens the feel of the bar. It also slows trace a little, which gives you more time to stir in the honey and pour.
• Castor oil: stabilizes the lather so the bubbles last longer in use. Keep it at the stated amount, because much more castor oil makes a softer, stickier bar.
• Honey: adds natural sugars for lather and a warm, sweet note to the scent. Its sugars also make the batter heat up, which is why it goes in last and the directions keep the temperatures cool.
• Sodium hydroxide (lye) and distilled water: the lye reacts with the oils to make soap and glycerin, and the distilled water carries it in. Distilled water keeps minerals out of the batch, which helps avoid spotting and dullness on the finished bars.

Baraka's shea butter is made by hand by women's producer groups at the Konjeihi Women's Enterprise Centre in Wa, Upper West Region, Ghana, where Wayne Dunn has worked directly with the centre for over 15 years. You can see how that butter is made, step by step, in How is Handcrafted Shea Butter Made?, and what the work adds up to in income, enterprise infrastructure and carbon is recorded in Baraka's Social and Environmental Impact Report.

Before You Begin: Soap-Making Safety

Lye is the one hazardous ingredient. Sodium hydroxide is a strong chemical that can cause severe burns to skin and eyes, and it heats water sharply as it dissolves, so these rules apply from the moment you open the container until the bars have cured.

• Wear protective gloves and eye protection whenever you handle lye.
• Work in a well-ventilated area, with a window open or near an extractor fan.
• Always add lye to water, never water to lye.
• Keep lye, raw soap batter and curing soap well out of reach of children and pets.
• This is an adults-only project from start to finish.

Ingredients

3 lb (1,362 g) of oils, weighed on a scale. Every oil, the lye and the water are measured by weight; only the honey is measured by volume.

• Shea butter: 1 lb (454 g)
• Traditional coconut oil: 1 lb (454 g)
• Olive oil: 1/2 lb (227 g)
• Castor oil: 1/2 lb (227 g)
• Sodium hydroxide (lye): 6.73 oz (191 g)
• Distilled water: 13.46 oz (382 g)
• Honey: 1/4 cup (60 ml), which weighs about 3 oz (85 g)

Lye calculation

The lye is worked out from each oil's weight multiplied by its saponification value for sodium hydroxide, using standard published soap-making values: shea butter 0.128, coconut oil 0.183, olive oil 0.135 and castor oil 0.128. The total is then reduced by 5% for superfat, and the water is set at twice the lye.

Oil	Weight	Lye it needs
Shea butter	16 oz (454 g)	16 × 0.128 = 2.05 oz (58 g)
Coconut oil	16 oz (454 g)	16 × 0.183 = 2.93 oz (83 g)
Olive oil	8 oz (227 g)	8 × 0.135 = 1.08 oz (31 g)
Castor oil	8 oz (227 g)	8 × 0.128 = 1.02 oz (29 g)
Total before superfat	48 oz (1,362 g)	7.08 oz (201 g)
After 5% superfat (× 0.95)		6.73 oz (191 g)
Water at twice the lye		13.46 oz (382 g)

Check these figures in a lye calculator before you make the soap: your scale, your oils and the calculator should agree to within a gram. Honey adds no oil, so it does not change the lye. For the values behind other oils and how superfat works, see our saponification value chart and soap-making guide.

How to make shea butter soap: the method in brief

Lye solution, melted oils, trace, then cure. To make Baraka's shea butter soap, dissolve the sodium hydroxide in the distilled water, melt the shea butter, coconut oil, olive oil and castor oil together, then slowly add the lye solution to the oils, stirring continuously. Blend to light trace, stir in the honey, pour into the mould and let the soap set for 24 to 48 hours before cutting and curing for 4 to 6 weeks.

The honey is what makes this soap different to handle: its sugars heat the batter, so work at 90 to 100°F (32 to 38°C) rather than warmer, and leave the mould uncovered in a cool room. The numbered steps below give every stage in order.

Directions

Mix cool, add the honey last, then cure 4 to 6 weeks. The hands-on work takes about 45 minutes; the bars are ready to use only after the full cure.

1. Put on gloves and eye protection before handling lye.
2. Measure the distilled water, then pour 1 oz (28 g) of it into a small cup and set it aside for the honey.
3. In a heat-resistant container, slowly add the sodium hydroxide to the rest of the water (never the reverse), stirring until fully dissolved. The mixture will heat up sharply, so set it aside in a ventilated area to cool.
4. Warm the reserved 1 oz (28 g) of water slightly and stir the honey into it until it is evenly mixed.
5. Melt the shea butter, coconut oil, olive oil and castor oil together gently until fully liquid.
6. When the lye solution and the oils are both between 90 and 100°F (32 and 38°C), slowly pour the lye solution into the oils, stirring continuously.
7. Use a stick blender in short bursts, alternating with hand stirring, until the mixture reaches light trace: it thickens slightly and leaves a faint trail when drizzled across the surface.
8. Add the honey mixture and stir it in by hand until evenly combined.
9. Pour into a soap mould, tap it gently to release air bubbles, and leave it uncovered in a cool room. Do not wrap or insulate it.
10. Let the soap set in the mould for 24 to 48 hours before unmoulding.
11. Cut into bars once firm, then stand the bars on their sides in a well-ventilated space to cure for 4 to 6 weeks before use.

Homemade shea butter soap: the equipment you need at home

A scale, a stick blender and a mould. Baraka's homemade shea butter soap is made by the cold process method in an ordinary kitchen, with a few pieces of equipment kept only for soap making. Lye reacts with aluminium, so every bowl, jug and spoon that touches it should be stainless steel, heat-resistant glass or sturdy plastic marked for high temperatures.

• A digital kitchen scale that reads in grams and ounces
• A stick blender
• Two thermometers, or one you rinse between the lye and the oils
• A heat-resistant jug for the lye solution and a large pan or bowl for the oils
• A loaf mould or silicone bar moulds holding about 4.5 lb (2,041 g) of batter
• Gloves, eye protection, and a spatula

Shea butter soap making: lye, superfat and cure

Calculate the lye, leave a little oil spare, wait for the cure. In Baraka's shea butter soap making, the lye is always worked out from the weight of each oil and its saponification value, then reduced by about 5% so a small share of oil stays in the bar as superfat. The chemical reaction is mostly complete within a day or two; the 4 to 6 week cure lets water evaporate so the bar hardens and lasts longer in use. The full working is in the lye calculation under Ingredients, and any change to an oil means running the numbers through a soap calculator again.

Troubleshooting

Most problems with honey soap come from heat. Here are the ones that come up most often with this recipe, with the cause and the fix for each.

Problem	Likely cause	Fix
A crack along the top, or soap bulging up out of the mould	The honey's sugars overheated the batter while it set	Soap at 90 to 100°F (32 to 38°C), leave the mould uncovered in a cool room, and next time move it to the fridge for the first few hours
A darker ring or a dark centre when you cut the bars	Part of the loaf went through a hot gel phase and the honey darkened	The soap is safe to use once cured; for an even colour, keep the mould cooler next time
The batter thickened suddenly after the honey went in	The batter was too warm, or it was blended too long before the honey was added	Add the honey at light trace, stir it in by hand rather than with the blender, and pour straight away
Sticky beads of honey or brown speckles in the bar	The honey was not mixed with water first, so it did not blend evenly	Dissolve the honey in the reserved water as the directions describe; speckles are cosmetic
The soap is still soft after 48 hours in the mould	A weighing error, or not enough blending to reach true trace	Leave it 3 to 5 more days before unmoulding; check your scale against a known weight before the next batch
A white, powdery film on the top of the bars	Soda ash, formed when unreacted lye at the surface meets air in the first day	Once the bars have cured, plane or steam the film off, as it is cosmetic
Pools of liquid oil or clear liquid in the mould	The batter separated, usually from false trace or a weighing mistake	Do not use the soap; wearing gloves, discard it and re-check every weight before the next batch

Storage and Shelf Life

Cure 4 to 6 weeks, then keep 12 to 18 months. Cure time is 4 to 6 weeks; do not use the soap before curing is complete, because it needs that time to harden and mellow. Once cured, bars typically keep well for 12 to 18 months.

Store cured bars in a cool, dry place away from direct sunlight, such as a drawer or shelf with some airflow. Honey soaps can pick up moisture from the air, so wrap them in paper or keep them in a lidded box in a humid room. Between uses, keep the bar on a well-draining soap dish.

The reason for cool, dry storage is the olive and castor oil in the bar: liquid oils are the parts of a soap most likely to turn rancid in heat and damp, which shows as orange spots. Unopened shea butter for your next batch keeps 2 years or more stored properly, away from heat and direct sun.

Scaling and Substitutions

Halve or double the oils, then recalculate the lye. The table gives each batch size with its own lye and water, worked out from that batch's oils with the same values and 5% superfat as the full recipe.

Ingredient	Half batch	Full batch	Double batch
Shea butter	8 oz (227 g)	1 lb (454 g)	2 lb (907 g)
Coconut oil	8 oz (227 g)	1 lb (454 g)	2 lb (907 g)
Olive oil	4 oz (113 g)	8 oz (227 g)	1 lb (454 g)
Castor oil	4 oz (113 g)	8 oz (227 g)	1 lb (454 g)
Sodium hydroxide (lye)	3.36 oz (95 g)	6.73 oz (191 g)	13.45 oz (381 g)
Distilled water	6.73 oz (191 g)	13.46 oz (382 g)	26.9 oz (763 g)
Honey	2 tbsp (30 ml)	1/4 cup (60 ml)	1/2 cup (120 ml)
Yield, cured	about 2 lb (907 g), 4 to 5 bars	about 4 lb (1,814 g), 8 to 10 bars	about 8 lb (3,629 g), 16 to 20 bars

The half and double lye figures are calculated from their own oil weights, so they sit within a gram of simply halving or doubling 191 g. Hold back 1/2 oz (14 g) of water for the honey in a half batch and 2 oz (57 g) in a double batch. Run your chosen batch size through a lye calculator before you start.

Substitutions

• Sunflower oil for olive oil: swap weight for weight. The lye stays at 6.73 oz (191 g) and the water at 13.46 oz (382 g), because the two oils need almost the same amount of lye (0.134 against 0.135).
• No castor oil: use 1 lb (454 g) of olive oil in place of the olive and castor oil together. The lye rises to about 6.78 oz (192 g) and the water to about 13.56 oz (384 g); check both in a lye calculator. The lather is thinner and fades faster.
• Palm kernel oil for coconut oil: it can replace coconut oil for a hard, quick-lathering bar, but the lye must be recalculated in a lye calculator first. Palm kernel oil is pressed from the kernel inside the palm fruit's stone and is not the same thing as red palm oil.
• No honey: leave it out and the recipe makes a plain shea butter soap with the same lye and water; use all the water for the lye solution.

Customisation Ideas

Honey level, texture, colour and shape can all change. Anything that changes an oil or its weight needs the lye recalculated before you make the batch.

• Use less honey for a paler bar that is easier to keep cool: 1 tbsp (15 ml) in the full batch still adds to the lather. The lye and water stay the same.
• Add oats by stirring 2 tbsp (30 ml) of finely ground oats into the batter at trace for a gently textured honey and oat bar.
• Change the mould to individual silicone bar moulds instead of a loaf for a different shape; small moulds also stay cooler.
• Deepen the colour by replacing 2 oz (57 g) of the olive oil with red palm oil, which keeps its natural colour and tints whatever it goes into. Olive oil drops to 6 oz (170 g); red palm oil needs 0.142 against olive oil's 0.135, so recalculate the lye in a lye calculator. Red palm oil stains cloth and worktops, so cover your surfaces.
• Always recalculate lye and water with a soap calculator before changing any oil or its weight.

Popular soap calculators (external links; always re-run before adjusting oils): SoapCalc.net, a widely used online calculator with a user-friendly interface; the Handcrafted Soap and Cosmetic Guild (HSCG) Lye Calculator; LyeCalc.com, another popular option with a simple design; and The Cosmetics Lab soap calculator, which offers additional features like fragrance and colour calculations. There are also many YouTube videos on how to calculate this.

Essential Oils

It works unscented; honey gives it a soft, sweet note. This recipe uses no essential oil. If you add one, Baraka's recommended limit for soap is no more than 1 tbsp (15 ml) of essential oil in total per 16 oz (454 g) of oils, so this 3 lb (1,362 g) batch can take up to 3 tbsp (45 ml) in total, counting every essential oil together.

Add essential oil at light trace, before the honey, and stir it in by hand. Some essential oils make batter thicken quickly, which adds to the heat honey already brings, so a first honey batch is best made unscented.

Application Tips

Use it like any bar soap, once fully cured. Lather with warm water on hands, face or body, and rinse well.

Because this soap is rich in conditioning oils, a light lather goes a long way, so there is no need to scrub. Let the bar dry between uses on a draining dish, and cut a large bar in half so one piece stays dry until you need it.

What We Know and How We Know It

Three kinds of source sit behind this page. The method, temperatures, cure time, the handling of honey in cold process soap and the saponification values are common practice in the home soap-making community, and the lye figures are calculated from standard published values with a 5% superfat. The description of Baraka's shea butter and coconut oil comes from Baraka's own product documentation. That honey works as a humectant and emollient in cosmetic formulations comes from published research: Burlando and Cornara's 2013 review in the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology and a 2024 study of honey creams on PubMed Central, which describes the sugars in honey as potent humectants.

The Impact of Your Purchase

When you make skincare with Baraka ingredients, you are buying from women's cooperatives that earn fair wages and keep traditional processing methods alive. Baraka's 2025 Social and Environmental Impact Report records income opportunities for more than 3,000 women in northern Ghana, over $100,000 invested in women's enterprise infrastructure, and equipment and fuel recovery that have cut the carbon impact of shea processing by up to 90%. At the Konjeihi Women's Enterprise Centre in Ghana's Upper West Region, Baraka's shea butter is made by hand, and the waste left over from making it is dried into fuel blocks that fire the next batch. Baraka also offsets 100% of the carbon cost of shipping to customers. You get full transparency about what touches your skin and your family's skin, and about where it came from.

Shop the Baraka Ingredients in This Recipe

Shea Butter: Shop Shea Butter. Unrefined and strained only, it is the base of the bar and gives it its creamy, conditioning feel.

Traditional Coconut Oil: Shop Traditional Coconut Oil. Pressed from fresh coconut kernel, it gives the bar its hardness and quick, abundant lather.

Browse more for your next batch: Butters, Oils, the DIY Starter and our Recipe Books.

Try These Next

More shea butter soaps to make next. Each of these uses the same cold process method with a different additive.

• Shea Butter and Turmeric Soap: a warm-toned bar that shows how a spice powder colours cold process soap.
• Shea Butter and Goats Milk Soap: another sugar-rich additive, with the same need to keep the batch cool.
• Creamy Cow Milk and Shea Butter Soap: a rich, mild bar built on the same shea base.
• Shea Butter and Aloe Vera Soap: a fresh, green-leaning bar for a lighter feel.
• Shea Butter and Cocoa Butter Soap: a harder, extra-conditioning bar with two Baraka butters.

About These Ingredients

This recipe was originally published in DIY Shea Butter Soap Making Recipes, Baraka's recipe book of shea butter soaps, which collects this bar alongside other cold process formulations.

Disclaimer

The information in this article is for general education. It reflects traditional use, reported experience and, where noted, published research. It has not been evaluated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or Health Canada. Baraka products are cosmetics and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease or medical condition. Always patch test a new ingredient, keep products away from the eyes and out of reach of children, and speak to a qualified healthcare provider about any skin or health condition. If you add essential oils, use no more than the amount given, and leave them out for young children, during pregnancy and on sensitive skin. Individual results vary.

About the Author

Wayne Dunn is the founder of Baraka Impact and a former Professor of Practice in Sustainability at McGill University. He holds an M.Sc. in Management from Stanford and has spent over 15 years working directly with the Konjeihi Women's Enterprise Centre in Ghana's Upper West Region to source traditionally made shea butter and natural oils. He shares DIY skincare recipes and ingredient guides designed to be made at home with real ingredients — and sourced with full transparency about where they come from.