MILK PREP: When lye is added to milk, it heats up to around 200 ° F. This scorches the milk, causing discoloration and an unpleasant odor. To prevent scorching, it's important keep temperatures as cool as possible. Our preferred technique is to freeze the goat milk and add the sodium hydroxide lye flakes directly to the frozen milk. To keep the milk extra, extra cold, you can place the container into a larger container with ice. In this project we skipped this step, but it's a personal preference. Measure out 11.6 ounces of goat milk and pour it into ice cube trays (in this case we used Medium 9 Ball Silicone Molds). Allow the milk to fully freeze. Then, place a container appropriate for mixing lye on a scale and weigh out the frozen cubes. Although it was measured previously, some milk might be lost in the freezing/transferring process. If you're missing any, pour cold goat milk into the container until you have 11.6 ounces. You can also use cold distilled water.

SAFETY FIRST: Suit up for safe handling practices! That means goggles, gloves and long sleeves. Make sure kids, pets, and other distractions and tripping hazards are out of the house or don’t have access to your soaping space. Always soap in a well-ventilated area.

LYE PREP: With safety gear on, slowly add about ¼ of the lye flakes directly to the frozen goat milk. Use a stainless steel spoon to stir the lye flakes and goat milk together. Slowly, the flakes will begin to melt the goat milk cubes. After a few minutes of stirring, add another ¼ of the flakes and continue stirring for several minutes. Continue this process until all the lye flakes have been added to the goat milk. Continue stirring and stirring...and stirring! The goat milk will continue to melt as more lye is added. Once the milk has fully melted, continue to stir to make sure all the lye flakes have completely dissolved. Because the temperatures are low, the lye flakes do not dissolve as quickly. Listen and look for lye flakes on the bottom of your container; lye flakes can take a lot longer to dissolve in cooler temperature liquids. Patience is key! Any undissolved lye in your soap could cause skin irritation or even lye burns, so take extra time to make sure all the lye is dissolved. Once all the lye has been added, the milk may become yellow. Below, our milk reached about 90 ° F and developed a very slight yellow color. This color of milk is suitable for this recipe. But, if you'd like to make sure your soap batter is as light as possible for your color palette, placing the container of frozen milk into an ice bath helps keep temperatures cooler, as shown in this post. If you’d like a harder bar of soap that releases faster from the mold, you can add sodium lactate to the milk solution. Use 1 teaspoon of sodium lactate per pound of oils in the recipe. For this recipe, you’d add 2 teaspoons sodium lactate. Now that the lye and milk solution is ready, it's time to prep the other ingredients.

COLOR PREP: To ensure that the titanium dioxide blends smoothly into the soap batter, we recommend micronizing it before dispersing it in oil. Please note this is an optional tip but it does help with the titanium dioxide clumping in the soap. =) To micronize colorant, simply use a coffee grinder to blend the colorant to break up any clumps of color and prevent streaks of white from showing in the final soap. We like to use a coffee grinder that has a removable, stainless steel mixing area for easy cleaning. Disperse 3 teaspoons of titanium dioxide into 2 tablespoons of lightweight liquid oil, like sweet almond oil or sunflower oil. In this recipe, we used a slightly more concentrated colorant-oil ratio to avoid adding too much extra oil.

FRAGRANCE PREP: Measure 2 ounces of Oatmeal Milk and Honey Fragrance Oil into a glass, fragrance oil safe container. Set aside.