Making soap with my new toy

So I've read, many, many times, that a stick blender is awesome for making soap but I've always just stirred by hand. I'm cheap that way. :) However, for Christmas I got a gift card and decided to go ahead and splurge on one, although I did get the cheapest one I could find.


Once it finally arrived, I made a batch of goat milk soap. I start with a pre-measured chunk of frozen milk. You're not supposed to let the milk get above a certain temperature or it burns the sugars.I believe it's mostly cosmetic, though. The cooler you keep it, the whiter the milk/soap. Mine is usually lemon yellow and sometimes even the 'bad' burnt orange. Sometimes it takes a couple hours to the milk mixed with all the lye, taking breaks to stick the milk in the frig to cool before continuing.

Above you can see the lemon yellow color as well as a chunk of still frozen milk. I have gone too fast before and had the milk turn the burnt orange that is supposed to be bad, but it still made fine soap.

As as aside, I have read that you can add lye to straight, fresh goat (and I assume cow) milk and get a soap. I haven't done it yet, but the milk does get awfully thick when mixing the lye into it. You can sort of see that in the pic below.

Then I melted my oils and made sure the temp of the oils and the lye were within 10 degrees of each other.













 Lard, olive oil and coconut oil



Then I mixed the lye into the oils. I stirred it by hand while pouring the lye into the oils, then I went with the stick blender.

Now I see what all the fuss is about! Wow, that went to trace way faster than with hand stirring! I like it! It also seems to make a much finer, smoother soap.

 In the pic above, you can kind of see the trace. It's sort of like almost done pudding. If you take a spoon and drizzle some around the pot, you'll leave a trail that stays for a minute or two. It took about 10 minutes with the mixer instead of closer to an hour.

Like I said, I like this thing! As long is lasts a year or so, I'll figure I got my money's worth out if it.