Comfrey + Cozy: From the Garden to the Soap Dish
ome soaps start with a fragrance. Some start with a color palette. Comfrey + Cozy started with a plant.
One of our neighbor friends shared some of their comfrey with us, and naturally, my first thought was, I wonder what I can do with this in soap? Because apparently I can no longer look at anything growing in a garden without considering its soap-making potential.
The result is Comfrey + Cozy, a small-batch cold-process soap made with comfrey tea, dried rosemary, and a soft lavender scent. It is earthy, botanical, a little rustic, and exactly the kind of bar I wanted it to be.
It Started With Comfrey
Comfrey has a long history of use in traditional topical preparations and has found its way into everything from salves and creams to handmade soaps. The plant contains compounds such as allantoin, and comfrey extracts are used in some modern cosmetic formulations as skin-conditioning ingredients.
For Comfrey + Cozy, I wanted the plant itself to be part of the soap-making process rather than simply adding a little dried comfrey for appearance.
I brewed the comfrey into a strong herbal tea and used that liquid in the soap batter. That means the comfrey isn't just decoration sitting on top of the finished bar. It was there from the very beginning.
Because this is soap, I'm careful about how I talk about botanicals. Comfrey has an interesting history in herbal skincare, but Comfrey + Cozy is a soap, not a treatment, and I'm not making claims that it heals or treats skin conditions. What I can say is that incorporating botanicals this way gives me another opportunity to experiment with plant-based ingredients and create bars with a character all their own.
And this one definitely has character.
Then Came the Rosemary
I wanted this bar to have a little more texture, so I sprinkled dried rosemary throughout the batter and added more to the textured top.
The tiny pieces give the finished soap a wonderfully rustic appearance and a bit of that gardener's-soap personality I was hoping for. When you look closely at a cut bar, you can see little botanical flecks scattered throughout the soft, muted soap.
Nothing about Comfrey + Cozy looks perfectly manufactured, and that's kind of the point.
Each loaf is mixed, poured, textured, unmolded, and cut by hand. Those little variations are part of what makes handmade soap so much fun.
Lavender Makes It Cozy
Comfrey and rosemary gave me the garden part of the bar. Lavender brought the cozy.
I chose lavender to complement the natural, earthy character of the comfrey without completely covering it up. The result is a soft herbal scent that feels right at home with the botanical look of the soap.
And the color surprised me in the best possible way.
The finished loaf developed into a beautiful muted blush-lavender shade with creamy lavender swirls along the top. Add the scattered rosemary, and it looks almost exactly how this soap smells: soft, herbal, earthy, and cozy.
No neon colors. No elaborate design. Just a pretty little garden-inspired bar doing its thing.
The Best Ingredients Sometimes Come From Next Door
One of my favorite things about making soap is finding ways to incorporate ingredients that have a story behind them.
We've already played with hops grown right here in our yard, brewing them into tea for soap and drying the rest to use in the bars. Comfrey + Cozy continues that idea, except this time the ingredient came from a neighbor who was kind enough to share what they were growing.
There's something especially satisfying about taking a plant grown nearby, brewing it in my kitchen, and eventually turning it into a finished bar of soap.
It doesn't get much more small-batch than that.
Now We Wait
Comfrey + Cozy has been unmolded, cut, and is officially settling in for its cure.
Cold-process soap requires patience. During the curing period, water gradually evaporates from the bars and they become harder and longer-lasting. It's one of those parts of soap making that can't really be rushed, no matter how badly I want to start handing bars to people.
Comfrey + Cozy is expected to be available in mid-November, just in time for cozy-weather season.
Until then, it'll be hanging out on the curing rack, getting better while I try very hard to leave it alone.
And considering how often I wander over to look at my curing soap, that may actually be the hardest part. 😂🌿💜
Comfrey + CozyComfrey tea infused cold-process soapDried rosemary throughoutLavender scentedHandmade in small batches by Sarcastic Narwhal Soap Company
Coming mid-November.
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