About a year or so ago, I learned to make soap. It is great fun, makes a wonderful gift, and feels oh-so-good on the skin. Better yet, it doesn't have any junk in it like sodium lauryl sulfate! The soap-making method I am familiar with is "cold-process" lye soap. The ingredients are only heated enough to melt them, then the soap takes about a month to "cure" before it is ready for use. For an amazing book on learning to make this type of soap, refer to Basic Soap Making: All The Skills and Tools You Need to Get Started, by Elizabeth Letcavage. This book has pictures of every single step and is perfect for beginners.
With the skills and ingredients collected over the past year, I am eager to transition into goat-milk soap now. Goat milk soap is more "delicate" to make as the milk must be handled carefully. Milk also reacts differently with the lye than the typical distilled water. I used a recipe off of the Hoegger website as a guide: Simple Milk Soap Recipe
With the skills and ingredients collected over the past year, I am eager to transition into goat-milk soap now. Goat milk soap is more "delicate" to make as the milk must be handled carefully. Milk also reacts differently with the lye than the typical distilled water. I used a recipe off of the Hoegger website as a guide: Simple Milk Soap Recipe
Here are all of the ingredients! Notice it is vital to wear eye protection and rubber gloves when making soap. Even a tiny grain of lye on the bare skin can sting really bad!
When lye interacts with water, it heats very quickly. So the first step was to add the lye to the water so it could be cooling. It was in a bucket of ice water to speed up this process. (Notice the yellow color is from the goat's milk. It was an unusual chemical reaction!)
The oils were all stirred together. This recipe included olive oil, coconut oil, palm oil, and castor oil.
The lye solution and the oils were then blended together until they reached "trace." Trace is where the mixture begins thickening and turns to a "pudding" texture. It was at this point that the lemongrass essential oil was added.
The soap was poured into molds. The silicone baking molds work superb for soap!
After setting the soap out of the way for 24 hours, the soap easily popped out of the molds! The soap will now sit in a dark cabinet for a couple of weeks before being used.
Beautiful!
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