Cold Process Goat's Milk Soap

I finally got around to it, and I must say I am once again so very proud of myself!! I never knew how much accomplishement I would feel by doing what I am doing now. My whole life right now feels like i have more purpose to it, and it feels really, really good.

So the soap.... I used what is called Cold Process Soap. From what I have learned this seems to make the best and prettiest soap, but it does take a lot longer to finish. I used a couple of sites to get it all going the first one where I used her basic recipe was from Soap Queen, http://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/cold-process-soap/my-favorite-cold-process-recipes-2

I used almond oil instead of the castor oil in her first recipe.

The second site I found very useful was on the cold process soap making procedures. It also had a recipe but it used so many ingredients I chose not to use it and go with something more basic, it is..http://www.soap-making-resource.com/goats-milk-soap-recipe.html, I liked the step by step instructions. Many of the sites I found would just show what they did or talked about making soap but didn't really have good, clear instructions. I really liked this one the best. I also liked that somewhere on their site (I don't know where i went through so much), it talked about soap molds and that you could use basically any container and just line it with a garbage bag. I loved that! All I found everywhere else were the molds to buy so this really saved me a ton of money right there!

On to the steps!!!

 Measure out your ingredients using a good scale. We used a digital scale that worked great!

 The goat's milk

 My beautiful little sister measures the oils for me. (She's 17 weeks pregnant so we kept her away from the lye.)

I look awesome in all my protective gear! Safety First!!! Measuring the lye.

 Mixing the oils together and heating them up.

 My wonderful Mom and I SLOWLY adding and mixing the lye to the slushy chunks of goat's milk. Hmmm... maybe chunks isn't the most picture perfect word there!

 The lye starts melting the goats milk.

 It turns this really shocking color orange as it heats up. I have to admit that was scaring me a little bit!

It heated up to about 120 degrees so it was put back in the bowl of ice water to cool to around 90.

 Our homemade soap mold. Thank goodness my mom has a lot of art supplies for the grandkids she keeps in neat storage bins! This is just a plastic bin lined with a garbage bag. You can also use a shoe box or any cardboard box too.

 Once we had both the oils and the milk/lye mixture cooled to about 90 degrees we mixed them together slowly with a big spoon, then I used my stick blender and started mixing them together. The color isn't so pretty right now right? We were hoping that it wouldn't stay that way!

 I blended until I got a light trace which is when the mixture is just thick enough to leave lines that don't go away immediately. I like to think of making frosting, when it starts to form peaks that stay there you know you're done. Just like that when the mixture stays put for a second before being absorbed back into the mass thats a light trace, and thats when I added my essential oils. I used a blend call "Invigorate" which has Spearmint, myrtle, Sage. nutmeg, Geranium and German Chamomile in it, and I also added in some lavender and mixed it all in. Once it got thick enough that it stayed on top I stopped mixing.

 We poured the mixture into our mold and then let it sit overnight.

 It's a pretty creamy color now! I am so relieved! I just pulled it out of the box and the garbage bag peeled off easily,

I cut it into squares and put it on my sheet to cure(dry). I have it in once of my closets away from my kids because at this point it can still be dangerous to touch. My closet luckily is made of wire shelves so there is plenty of air flow around the squares, you could easily use a baking sheet though!

And like I said, I am really proud of myself! I can't wait to be able to use ti. I wish it didn't take so long to cure, but thats the drawback to using cold process method. I think they look really nice though. They seem to have come out alright despite my ignorance in soap making. I'm going to try a crockpot hot process soap pretty soon, those only take a day to cure but won't come out so smooth and pretty. I'm excited to give it a try though, and to make more of this kind too.