When I told a friend that I had made some Prickly Pear Soap, he said, "Ooooh!, That would be painful to wash with!" Silly man! No stickers go in my soap, only the rich juice of the beautiful red tuna (fruit) of the plant.
I'm going to share with you just how I make my Prickly Pear soap. First, is to wait until the fruit of the Prickly Pear plant is ripe. In the Spring in southern Arizona, this plant is covered with the most gorgeous golden flowers! As the season progresses, fruit replaces the flowers and begins turning a beautiful crimson red color. Around the first week of September, the fruit is ready to be harvested for juices, jellies, and many other purposes ... including soap!
As luscious as these fruits look, they DO have tiny, hair-like stickers all over them and must be plucked with tongs. The next step is to singe off the tiny stickers.
Now that the stickers are gone, they can be popped into a pot to boil for about 20 minutes.
Next, I smash them up pretty good to extract as much of the rich juices as I can, then strain the juices from the fruit with a nut bag.
Now, I'm ready to make soap! This video that I posted on YouTube shows me making Prickly Pear Soap. I've decreased the amount of water I used to dissolve the lye and replaced it with the same amount of Prickly Pear juice at trace.
The finished product is a silky, smooth bar of soap, made with natural luxury oils and scented very delicately with my own fragrance blend. It has a rich lather and special nutrients to nourish and pamper your skin!
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