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Handmilled Soaps

I've been having a bit of fun with soap recently - mainly by hand milling some old Castile Soap I had lying around. Hand milling is a good way to add scents and colouring without interfering with the lye/oil/water reaction.

The method I use involves taking premade soap (handmade or shop bought) and remelting it. The following recipe only makes about 3 normal sized soaps or about 8 small ones, but it can be doubled/quadrupled etc. to make larger batches. I suggest doing a smaller quantity first to find the right balance of ingredients before doing a larger amount.




Extra ingredients that I have tried:
Scents: 1/3 to 1 Tbsp of finely chopped solid + few drops essential oil


I quite liked the oat soap, it had a very nice scratchy, exfoliating-type texture and the oats stayed nice and crisp, unlike when I added them into the pre-soap liquid.

Milk powder and honey was also a bit of a favourite, as was the lavender. Lavender and honey have nice soothing smells, and I felt that the milk soap felt just a bit smoother - but it could be my imagination :).

Honestly the ginger was disappointing, the colour was quite nice - a subtle golden-brown fleck - but it smelt exactly the same as normal soap :(.

I quite liked the coconut - beautiful smell, nice texture (scratchy like the oats) but I received complaints from my family that they were left with clumps of shredded coconut in their hair.... I think I will try this one again, but with the coconut processed more finely.

Rosemary was very successful, a nice garden/kitchen soap with a nice clean smell that always makes me hungry (roast anyone?).

Apricots also turned out quite well. I tried this on a whim because I had a bit of grated soap left over (and I'd put a lot of effort into grating it) and didn't have much hope for success. I was pleasantly surprised - it made a nice pink/orange tinged rustic soap. Because the apricots are finely diced, they don't detract from the normal texture and cleaning properties of the soap to a great extent. I did add a small amount of boric acid to this batch of the soap to preserve the apricots (even though they are dried I didn't want to take any risks).

These little soaps make great gifts, especially when teamed with a knitted face cloth.

Posted by Harube at 12:18 AM