Oatmeal, Milk and Honey

I mentioned a bit ago that I had someone that was offering me some goat's milk.  Well, I got my goat's milks on Sunday and Tuesday after freezing some of the goat's milk, I made my first milk soap.  I made oatmeal, goat's milk and honey, unscented.  For the most part, I kept to my usual recipe of olive, palm, coconut and castor oils, but I used the goat's milk to replace the water in my lye mixture.  I used 100% goat's milk and no water in the mix. 

As I had done a fair amount of reading in advance on how people have been doing goat's milk soaps, I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do.  I measured out and froze the goat's milk in an ice cube tray the day before so it would not get too hot when I added the lye.  I mixed the oils before I started mixing the lye, and next time I do this, I will wait until the oils cool some before I start adding the lye to the milk.  If the goat's milk (or any milk) gets too hot as you add the lye it will overheat and scorch, turning brown and sort of curdled.  While it is still usable if you do that, it does not smell very pleasant and does not have the nice creamy appearance of a bar that has not been scorched. 

Well, with me, I mixed the lye to the milk cubes and the lye mixture started to rise in temperature as I waited for the oils to cool off.  I ended up putting the lye mix in the freezer to avoid scorching as I did not want to add it to the oils while they were too warm.  The lye mix was very thick as I poured it into the oils (I had already added a teaspoon of honey to my oils so I wouldn't forget).  The mixture came to trace fairly slowly compared to what I am used to, but it seems to have done well.  I added the oatmeal at trace.

I put the soap in the freezer for about three hours after I poured it, and then switched it to the refrigerator.  This was to keep the soap from overheating and also kept it from gelling.  It was my first soap that did not gel.  Overall, I am happy with the way it turned out. 

I am not sure if I will get much in with soaping this weekend, as I have some other plans that will keep me pretty busy on at least Saturday. I am hoping I will get at least one batch in, maybe more, but we will see! Until next time, soap happy :-)