Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Making Goat's Milk Soap

"Anyone's life truly lived consists of work, sunshine, exercise, soap, plenty of fresh air, and a happy contented spirit"- Lillie Langtry


I can make soap from my goat's milk... and it is GOOD; creamy to the touch and it leaves my hands feeling soft like I rubbed lotion on them. I FOLLOWED THIS RECIPE almost verbatim with the items in the picture. --->

Sean drove to work with the Borax I bought this morning, so the mixture sat a little longer than the recipe called for while I waited for him to bring it back to me. And, my hand mixer broke the last thread it was hanging on by, and so I threw it out and finished mixing the soap to "trace" by hand. Mixing by hand wasn't too bad, though. Contrary to what the recipe read, it only took about 10-15 minutes total to attain the "trace" stage.


 I started by melting 1 1/2 pounds of lard on the stove top until it reached 85-90 degrees. Then set it aside. I removed the chunk of frozen goat's milk (I froze a 3 cup portion overnight.) from its zip lock bag and placed it in a stainless steel bowl and added just over 3/4 cup of lye. The lye causes a chemical reaction when added to the milk and heats up quickly, freezing the milk helps to avoid the mixture from getting too hot and scorching. I stirred slowly and carefully spooned the lye liquid over the mass of frozen milk until it completely dissolved and turned a lovely creamy yellow color. It looked very pretty to me.

While the lye mixture was doing it's thing, I took a minute to stir the glycerine and oatmeal together. It was at this point that I discovered I was missing borax, but remedied that with a phone call. I added the oatmeal/glycerine mixture to the melted lard, stirred it well and left it alone while the lye continued to melt. Once the milk/lye mixture was cooled to 85 degrees, I added the borax to the lard mixture, gave it a good stir, and dumped that into the milk/lye bowl and began to mix on low with my hand blender. Almost immediately, the mixer sparked and stopped working, but I soldiered on- mixing by hand. I called it good when I could see a trace of where my mixing strokes had been in the bowl and the mixture was the consistency of gravy.

I only bought one soap mold at AC Moore this week because I did not know what the yield would be to this recipe. I needed more than one. Undaunted, I substituted a thick plastic pan that normally serves as a cover to my cupcake tray. I sprayed it with Crisco cooking spray to help the setting soap to avoid sticking. The tray was too big, so I folded a piece of tin foil to create a shield and held that in place with a couple upside down bowls. It wasn't real pretty, but it did the trick. Since I was setting two separate containers of soap, I decided to scent one set of the bars with cucumber/melon essence and the other container with eucalyptus/mint essence. They smell wonderful. The soap bars need to set up overnight before I can turn them out of the molds. I will carefully attempt to cut the soap in the make-shift container into six additional bars with a sharp knife.

It takes 4-6 weeks for the soap to fully cure and be ready to use. I can't wait to be able to use the soaps I made ♥.  How cool is that???

Thanks for stopping by for a visit.
Sonja ♥

2 comments:

  1. Cool beans! Great idea turning the cupcake topper into a mold too.

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  2. Great post! It's crazy how much work goes into making a bar of soap and how long you have to wait to use it. I bet it will turn out perfect!

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