A salad shooter is a kitchen appliance used to grate or slice vegetables, but it can also be used for unique melt and pour soap designs! This month we used oatmeal soap, honey soap and luffa powder to create a soap hay bale and topped the hay bale with an orange pumpkin.
 
The tricky part of this design is determining how much soap is needed to fit inside the mold. To fill a mold with soap curls, use one-half of the size of the mold. For example, if the mold holds 44 ounces, prepare 22 ounces for the soap curls. This give you a little extra soap, but the extra soap is needed because the salad shooter will not grate all of the soap. There is usually a small slice which gets stuck between the blade and the attachment.
 
The actual soap grating is fun and easy! Cut soap to fit inside the shoot, place it in the shoot, place the pusher on top of the soap, and turn on the appliance. In a few seconds, the soap is transformed into cute curls!
 
Embedding the curls takes patience, but it is simple to do. First, melted soap is needed to hold all the curls together. You will need a little under three-fourths the amount that fits in the mold. For example, if the mold holds 44 ounces, prepare 32 ounces of soap. Melt the soap and allow it to cool to at least 125ºF. We prefer using Detergent Free soap bases for this purpose because they stay more fluid at 125ºF compared to detergent bases. Begin by pouring a one-quarter inch layer of soap into the mold. Next, generously spray a handful of soap curls with rubbing alcohol and place into the mold. Pour another quarter inch layer of soap into the mold and, again, spray the curls with rubbing alcohol and place into the soap. Continue doing this until the mold is full or if you are using a soap column to top the soap (like in our pumpkin soap), stop one-half inch from the top.

These next steps are only if you are using a soap column to top the loaf. Pour a thin layer of melted soap, spray the soap column with rubbing alcohol, and place it on top of the melted soap. Sprinkle more alcohol-sprayed soap curls next to the soap embed and finish by pouring more soap to fill the mold and hold the last soap curls in place. Allow the soap loaf to harden.
 
Once the soap is hard, remove it from the mold and slice into bars. This technique can be used with different color soap curls and layered soap designs to create interesting bars of soap.