Goats, Butterflies and Guinea Pigs.

Butterfly Meadow (L) and Unscented Goats Milk Soap (R)

Friday, September 26, 2014

With the Foxfire Festival on the horizon, we are madly finishing up many of the soaps that people have requested during the last few shows.

Goats Milk soap has been high on the request list, so today we made another large batch of GM soap and will split it into two batches.  Alison will be working on the unscented batch, and I will work on the scented one.

The unscented batch will be pure soap, no color and no scent. Many of our customers want "old fashioned" soap without all the bells and whistles; this will be the real deal.  The other batch will be scented with Butterfly Meadows from +Natures Garden. 

We made soap using the HP method, all the oils (castor, coconut, sweet almond, avocado and sustainable palm kernel flakes) went into the crock pot then we combined the lye & distilled water and added them to the oils.  We used the stick blender to bring the mixture to a medium/heavy trace then put the lid on and let it cook on low temperature for thirty minutes.

It is so hard not to peek or stir! We have to use serious self discipline.

In the scented batch, we will use Fizzy Lemonade Mica from +Bramble Berry.  

To give the yellow in the scented soap some added depth, we used some Diamond Dust Mica from +Natures Garden.

Once we added the Diamond Mica to the Fizzy Lemonade (which had been mixed with 1 TBSP of Safflower Oil), the mixture began to shimmer.

We were transfixed by the different patterns created as we stirred.

+Natures Garden describes it as follows:   "begins with top notes of summer 

dandelion, refreshing verbena, and soft heliotrope;  followed by middle notes of 

spring meadows, lily of the valley, and weeping willow; all sitting on base notes 

of sweet pea blossoms and Kentucky blue grass."  It is quite a lovely scent.

We haven't used this scent much as it does not work well in CP soaps, in fact it seizes (turns batter into a brick before you can get it into a mold).  However in HP or in candles, it works like a champ.

We are skipping over the pictures of the soap cooking this time. We have it down to a flat 1-1/2 hours of cooking and it's done.  We don't stir for the first thirty minutes, then every fifteen minutes give it a stir until its done.  

We aren't getting cocky about cooking the soap, not by any means because we know "things" can happen. We are not always sure what those "things" might be, but we do check the soap regularly, and we don't by any stretch of the imagination take cooking soap lightly.  

We were right on schedule with this batch, and once it was finished cooking we removed the crock from the base and began adding the final ingredients.

We added in three ounces of warmed distilled water with 

1-3/4 TBSP of local honey.

We had already mixed the goats milk and placed into the freezer earlier. 

It was almost frozen, but we were able to scrape it into the soap batter 

and mix it in.  The goats milk helps lighten the soap without using titanium dioxide.

Once the honey water and the goats milk were thoroughly mixed in, Alison removed enough batter to fill a 10" silicone mold, and her side of the soap making was done.

Boy that was easy!

I partially filled the other mold with uncolored batter, then added the Fizzy Lemonade/Diamond Sparkle to the remaining batter in the crock.

Oops!

Alison burst out laughing and said, what about the scent! 

(Actually I didn't laugh until I saw the look on Kathy's face after 
I asked, "What about the scent?")

I had forgotten to add the scent! Believe me, this isn't the first time this has happened

(and sad to say, probably won't be the last).

What to do?

We grabbed a large measuring cup and dumped in all the batter.

We made sure to get every little bit, then added most of the premeasured Butterfly Meadow FO and mixed well.

We added the remaining FO to the yellow batter that was 

still in the crock, again mixing it well.

Once all the scent was mixed in, we put the white batter back into the mold, filling it about 3/4 full.

(It would have been so much better to have remembered the FO first, but oh well!)

I added a layer of yellow batter mixed with the remaining white batter to the top of the  3/4 full mold.

Using a spatula, then a knife I swirled the batter in the mold, hopefully it was swirled enough, we will see when it's unmolded.

Here is what the two batches looked like 48 hours later, just before they were unmolded.

We usually unmold after 24 hours, however weekend plans got in the way, but waiting made no difference, as the soap is already cured.

Lovely, almost pure white, unscented and uncolored Goats Milk Soap.

The white flecks are pieces of cooked soap from the side of the crock pot. We probably could have left those out rather than stir them into the batter, but 

we hate to waste a drop of soap.

Butterfly Meadow Goats Milk Soap

, The yellow swirl actually turned out quite nicely.

Both the scented and unscented soaps will be ready to use in a week.

After we finish every batch of HP soap we scrape the sides of all measuring cups and the crock. We usually wind up with a mishmash of pieces that are still pliable enough to mash together to create a really rustic piece of sample soap that we split and use.

 Yes, we are our own guinea pigs.