Tutorial: Goat's Milk, Honey and Avocado Oil Soap

This post comes to you courtesy of Veronica.

Everybody loves a goat's milk soap. With all the good press goat's milk has been getting lately, I figured it was time to venture into a few goat's milk soaps. Milk soaps aren't new to me, so I was quietly confident nothing would go wrong.

However, then I had to try and source some goat's milk. My preference was for fresh, not powdered, so I headed to a large supermarket an hour from home in the hope they would have goat's milk when the shops close to me did not.

An hour of searching later, we found some goat milk - so I bought every single carton in the shop. Just in case. Obviously the hope is to find farm fresh goat's milk eventually, but in the meantime, supermarket bought works.

Luxury Goat's Milk, Honey, and Avocado Oil Soap

This recipe has been resized to fit a 10 inch Bramble Berry silicone mould. I made a large batch (5 x 8 inch moulds, or 4kg of base oils), but I’ve resized this recipe down to fit a 10 inch silicone mould, which is 1000g (35 oz) of base oils, or 1.4l (50 oz) of soap batter.

Soap Formula Used

• 300g (10.6 oz) Olive Oil
• 200g (7 oz) Rice Bran Oil
• 200g (7 oz) Coconut Oil
• 150g (5.3 oz) Sunflower Oil
• 70g (2.5 oz) Macadamia Oil
• 50g (1.7 oz) Castor Oil
• 30g (1.05 oz) Avocado Oil
• 320g (11.3 oz) Goat's Milk - frozen into cubes
• 134g (4.72 oz) Sodium Hydroxide

Extra Additives

• 15g (0.5 oz) Honey
• 30g (1 oz) warm water

PREP WORK

Working really slowly, dissolve your lye in your frozen goat's milk, a spoonful at a time. Use an ice bath to stop the milk heating up and getting "scorched". A little yellowing is okay - by the end of mine I had a butter yellow mix and a slight ammonia smell, but nothing I was concerned about.

Weigh out your oils.

Dilute your honey in your warm water.

 Frozen goat's milk cubes! Use an ice tray, silicone is awesome! ;)

Give your milk/lye solution a really good mix to make sure everything is dissolved well.

 Goat's milk lye solution prepped

Avocado Oil!

GETTING STARTED

Working at room temperature, pour your lye mixture into your oils. You can pour through a sieve if you're worried about undissolved lye. It's okay if your lye mix looks a teensy bit lumpy - the fats in the goat's milk will saponify a little in the beginning.

Stick blend to light trace and add your honey/water mixture.

THE FINISH

Pour into moulds and texture your top lightly if that's what you like.

A lot of people will attempt to prevent goat's milk soap from gelling, but my freezer was full of food and I had no room for soap. Instead, I put the moulds into my soaping cupboard and left them at room temperature to gel. It's cold here in Tasmania at the moment, so my soaping room wasn't any more than 14C (57F) so I wasn't terribly concerned about overheating.

As always, if you allow your milk soaps to gel, they will be a more caramel coloured soap. This is the look I was going for. If you want a whiter soap, use a little titanium dioxide in the recipe and freeze your soap for 24 hours post-pouring to prevent gel.

 Creamy raw goat's milk soap in the molds!

The Goat's Milk, Honey, and Avocado Oil recipe is an original formula created by Veronica Foale. It is palm-free, and uses a 6% superfat (plus a little extra from the goat's milk).

Feel free to adjust or share as needed!

Note: I used Sunflower Oil at 15%, which is higher than a lot of recommended rates, but I adore the creamy lather of sunflower oil. As long as your oil was bought fresh from somewhere with high oil turnover rate, it should be fine. Sunflower Oil is a staple in most Australia grocery stores, so it is an inexpensive way to add creamy lather to a soap.