Cut pictures of my goat's milk and yogurt soaps

This first soap is my faux funnel pour lavender patchouli scented soap that I made with goat's milk. The colors were natural and pink. I wish the pink was darker so that the layers popped a bit more, but the soap still looks pretty.

Faux Funnel Lavender Patchouli Goat's Milk Soap

 

Faux Funnel Lavender Patchouli Goat's Milk Soap

This next soap was made with some homemade yogurt and scented with a honey fragrance. I did an in the pot swirl with some uncolored soap and some soap colored with a gold mica. If you look closely, you can see the gold sparkles, but again i wish the colors has more contrast so that the gold would be very obvious. I guess next time I need to add titanium dioxide to my "uncolored" soap portion so that the gold stands out more. This soap also looks like it had a partial gel (how do I know?--the dark circle in the center of the soap is a clear indication of partial gel). I tried to get this soap not to gel, but I guess I did not try hard enough. Next time, the soap will go outside if it is cold, or into the fridge.

Honey Scented Yogurt Soap

Honey Scented Yogurt Soap

All in all, I am pleased with how these two soaps look. If you want to give them a try, check back soon as they will be added to my website and Etsy store shortly!

Making super creamy soap using yogurt

I recently blogged about making Greek yogurt in a crock pot (see it here) and decided to use some of the yogurt I made in a batch of soap. I still had a ton of yogurt left over and knew there was no way Dylan and I could eat it quick enough (note to self--1 gallon of milk is WAY too much!). So into the soap it went.

I prepare my lye in batch form and keep a stock of it prepared at a ratio of 1 part lye to 1.5 parts water. When I go to make soap I always have to add a bit of water to get to the correct percentage of lye. For this soap, instead of adding the extra water, I replaced it with the yogurt and mixed it directly into the warm oils instead of into the lye. When you do this, make sure to whisk the yogurt into the oils well. Next, I added the lye solution to the oils and yogurt and mixed with a stick blender until a light trace was reached. I then split the soap into two containers and colored one container of soap gold (see picture below).

Uncolored soap on left and gold mica colored soap on right.

I poured the gold soap back into the container with the cream colored soap and did a slight in the pot swirl. The soap was then poured into the mold and the top was sprinkled with gold glitter.

Setting up an in the pot swirl

The gold did not end up being very obvious and it would be better in the future to use a more contrasting color so that it stands out more from the cream colored soap. Since this soap is made with yogurt, I did not place it in the oven overnight to do CPOP, instead after I poured it into the mold I covered it with a silicone sheet and placed a towel on top. This was allowed to sit at room temperature overnight. I am still waiting for the soap to harden up a bit more so that I can get it out of the mold. I normally do a heavy water discount when making soap, but this time I used the full amount of water. So now I must wait for some of that to evaporate before I can slice the soap and see if any of my swirls are noticeable.

If you are interested in the silicone loaf soap mold, you can pick one up on Amazon. *Please note that this is an affiliate link. That means that I get a small payment from Amazon if you buy from this link at no additional cost to you.

Soap poured and setting up.

Making Greek yogurt in a crockpot!

My mother and I were chatting about making yogurt in a crockpot probably 6 months ago. She was telling me how simple and delicious it turns out. Well, being one that likes to try new things, it has been stuck in my mind since then. Finally the time has come and guess what? Mom was right...it really was quite simple and delicious.

I wanted to avoid straining my yogurt really just because it sounds messy and I was feeling lazy. So, I followed directions for foolproof (no strain) Greek yogurt over at One good thing by Jillee with a bit of a modification (I did not put my yogurt into jars for the 8-12 hr incubation and just left it in the crockpot). 

I might also recommend halving the recipe unless your family eats a lot of yogurt each week. A full gallon of milk turned out to be WAY too much yogurt for Dylan and I.

Ingredients:
1 gallon milk (I used 1%)
2-3 cups powdered milk (I used 3 cups of nonfat powdered milk)
1/2 cup yogurt with active bacterial strains (I used a Greek yogurt with 5 strains).

Directions:
1. Pour the milk into your crockpot.

2. Whisk in the powdered milk to increase the proteins and produce a thicker yogurt.

Whisking in the powdered milk

3. Heat the milk in the crockpot on low until it reaches 180 degrees F
. This took about 2.5-3hrs for me.
4. Turn off the crockpot and cool the milk to between 95 to 115 degree F.
5. Stir in a half cup of live culture yogurt into the milk until completely blended.

Heat to 180 deg. F

6. Remove the crockpot ceramic insert, cover and wrap with towels or a blanket.

Wrap with towels to keep around 100 deg. F overnight.

7. Place the wrapped crockpot in an oven with the light on for 8 to 12 hours to complete the culturing process.


6. At the end of your culturing time, scoop the yogurt into containers and place in the fridge and chill before eating.

Look how thick it is!

It is supposed to last 10 days and if you plan to make this regularly remember to remove half a cup of the yogurt to use as your bacterial starter next time. The starter can be frozen so that it lasts longer. 

The yogurt tastes great with a bit of honey and granola. Yumm! While it did turn out quite thick, I still think I will strain it with a cheese cloth or coffee filter next time to get it extra thick. Then perhaps I can use the whey in some soap!

Mixed with a bit of honey and some cereal...yumm!