Soap Lily: Luscious Orange Rosemary Goats Milk Soap

Orange Rosemary Hot Process soap

A brief interlude into the hot process "non stirring" camp

while we create luscious orange rosemary soap!

Tuesday September 16, 2014

So we're on a roll with the goats milk; using the powdered rather than raw takes away all the anxiety of using goats milk. It is almost effortless, and since we need the soap soon, we are using the hot process method. Yesterday it was Sweet Pea and Ivy. Today we head to our EO (essential oil) shelf and mix two of our favorites to create an essential oil blend that is both sweet and fresh with orange and rosemary.

Both the EO's we are using came from +Lebermuth Co. We have used orange EO before, and we know going in that it will color the batter a soft orange color. This is ok.

We liked the light gold mica sparkle so much from yesterday's soap that we decided to use that technique again today with Icicle Mica. It should add depth to the finished bars. Because we knew the orange EO would definitely color the batter, we decided to reserve about a cup of batter before adding the EO, and color it with Enchanted Forest Mica. Then we will mix/swirl it into the soap to represent the green of the rosemary. Both the mica sparkle and Enchanted Forest are from www.rusticescentuals.com.

As we did yesterday we added all the oils together except the olive oil. We put the Icicle mica into the olive oil.

We mixed it thoroughly.

Then we added it to the rest of the oils warming in the crock pot: Sweet Almond, Avocado, Palm Kernel (oil) flakes, Coconut, and Castor.

As we did yesterday, we mixed six Tablespoons of the +Bulk Apothecary. powdered Goats Milk with three ounces of distilled water.

Once it was thoroughly mixed we put it in the freezer so it will freeze or at least get cold and slushy. There really is goats milk in the bottom of the dish - guess we shouldn't have used white.

We will be adding honey to this soap when it is done, so while we waited on the soap to cook, we prepared the honey. We used honey from Rabun County, just north of us, and mixed one tablespoon of it into 3.8 ounces of warm water.

What is the personal history we created today?? It is big. It is unbelievable. It is mind blowing. Here is the scoop. We didn't stir.

It seems that In the Hot Process soaping world there is a stirring faction and there is a non-stirring faction. In our short but illustrious soap making career we always stir - we can't stand not to. So far (we're knocking on wood) we've had no problems. Each time we make HP soap we always ask each other, "To stir or not to stir?" But, then we capitulate and start stirring.

But, today we didn't stir. That's not to say we didn't peek, because we did. We had to keep an eye on the soap to be sure it didn't bubble over, or dry out, or do anything crazy.

So here is the long and short of not stirring, this picture is what the soap looked like after it had cooked for fifteen minutes, it is gelling around the edges and more than likely somewhat hard. This is where we usually begin stirring. We didn't stir.

SO.......

This is what the soap looked like after 1-1/2 hours of cooking. It was supposed to fall into itself; we aren't sure if that happened or not, but it looked and smelled done. We did the zap test and PH strips, and all signals were go. The soap was DONE (without our stirring every 15 minutes!)

We stirred in the honey/water until it was completely blended.

Next, we slowly added in the ice cold goats milk. It wasn't completely frozen because we had taken it out of the freezer about 15 - 20 minutes earlier as it had become frozen solid. Although it was supposed to be frozen slush, it worked just fine going in as ice cold.

We scooped about one cup of batter out of the crock and added the Enchanted Forest Mica, stirring until it was completely blended.

To the remainder of the lovely white batter we added the Orange and Rosemary EOs.

You can see the difference in the color. Well, it does smell like

oranges, so the color is to be expected.

All the scent has been added in, and now we will begin to

stir, and stir, and stir...

We took turns stirring the scents into the soap batter because we wanted to make positively sure that every ounce was filled with the essential oils.

When the essential oils were thoroughly incorporated into the batter,

we began filling up the log mold.

When the mold was about half filled, we added several dollops of the

Enchanted Forest colored batter.

When we had all the green batter in the mold, we tamped it down by slamming

the mold on the counter 5 or 6 times as hard as we could.

It is not clearly visible in the above photo, but I have a long wooden pick in my hand. I inserted it deep into the batter and swirled, trying to mix the dollops of green into the orange.