Soap on a Stick...UGH!!

I love to make soaps using milk. So far I've really liked goats milk, butter milk and coconut milk. There are a few ways that milk can be used in your recipe. I like to use a half and half procedure, because that way I don't have to worry about scorching my milk with lye. Also you don't get the fowl odor and color as you can with adding lye directly to your milk. But that's just me, others use what works best for them.

The method I use isn't totally without fault though. One of the main problems you can encounter is seizing. When using such a high water discount, your soap will very rapidly reach trace when the lye water is added to the oils. So it's best to soap cool, and use fragrance oils that won't add to the acceleration of trace. I suspect the latter to be the cause of my problems in the batch I'm about to share. I call it Oatmeal Milk and Honey because I use oatmeal, buttermilk and honey in my recipe. The fragrance oil I use in it is a blend I've concocted, but probably won't be using again. :)

Anyway, I measured out my water and milk and added the lye to the water and when it cooled I added it to the oils (to which I'd already added the fo and honey). I tried to use my stick blender, but before I could grab a camera I was getting something with a consistency of mashed potatoes.

Before I could get all the milk in the batch was setting up so hard that I couldn't even stir the milk in...ugh! So I did the only thing I could do and moved it over to the stove. I heated it over medium low heat and stirred constantly. Before long it limbered up and I was able to get a more uniform consistency.

So I added the rest of my ingredients, can't have omh without oatmeal.

Okay, so it ended up really thick, but not a complete loss...whew! So I plopped it in the mold tried to get the best looking top I could with what I was dealing with and crossed my fingers. :)

For this batch I'll try another fragrance oil next time, one that won't add to the problem. Also, it wouldn't be a bad idea to stir and not stick blend, at least until I see how it's going to behave. But if worse comes to worse there is always hot process. :)