Goat’s milk and honey soap is a beautiful handmade gift to make or receive. By using a goat’s milk melt and pour soap base, you can skip the risk of dealing with lye and the hassle of milking a goat.
The resulting soap is still handcrafted with love right in your home kitchen, and the shape, add-ins, and scents are all your own.
A while back I shared a recipe for an easy goat’s milk and honey soap for beginners hoping to convince people that soapmaking doesn’t have to be scary. Done right, avoiding the main soapmaking mistakes that newbies make, soapmaking with lye is fun and safe. Lye still scares people though, and now that I’m a mother of two small children it’s tricky to get a day in the kitchen alone for soapmaking.
The thing is, there’s a lot more to soapmaking than lye and oils. Choosing shapes, colors, scents and add-ins takes more time, effort and creativity than the actual saponification process itself. By making melt and pour soaps, you can still get your creative juices flowing without pulling out all the safety gear.
I put my 1-year-old down for a nap and my 3-year-old excitedly joined me in the kitchen for soapmaking time! The melting point of melt and pour soap is right around 120 degrees, so it’s not scalding hot.
My little one was able to help stir and pour the soap without a worry about safety. The only concern is mess, but with good supervision and a careful child, it’s no problem.
Supplies for Melt and Pour Soap
This soap is simple and only has one mix in ~ honey. If you’d like, feel free to add a tablespoon of your favorite oil like jojoba or sweet almond for a more nourishing bar.
- 1 lb Goats Milk Melt and Pour Soap Base
- 2 to 4 Tbsp Honey
- 1 Tbsp Nourishing Oil such as Jojoba or Sweet Almond (optional)
- Double Boileror Microwave Safe Bowl
- Silicone Spatula
- Soap Mold (I’m using this one, but there are a lot of other beautiful choices here too)
- Yellow Soap Colorant (optional)
How to Make Goat’s Milk and Honey Melt and Pour Soap
Start by chopping the block of melt and pour soap base into small cubes. Roughly 1 centimeter (1/2 inch) cubes work well. The idea here is to increase the surface area and help the soap melt more evenly. Melt and pour soap bases are quite soft and you won’t have trouble going through it with a good chef’s knife.
Place the chopped soap base in a heatproof bowl and slowly melt it, stirring often. It’s important to avoid burning melt and pour soap as that’s the one thing that will completely destroy a batch. If you’re using a microwave, cook it for no more than 30-60 seconds at a time and then stir in between.
Believe it or not, I don’t have a microwave and so I’m making it on the stovetop. On the stovetop, direct heat can quickly burn a batch so it’s important to use a double boiler.
You don’t need anything fancy, just a heatproof bowl that fits nicely on top of a small saucepan. Add a bit of water to the saucepan and place the bowl containing soap chunks on top.
Turn the heat on and allow the water to come to a simmer. The indirect heat from the steam will slow the melting process and prevent burning.
Even in a double boiler, it only took about 2 minutes for chunks of soap to go from solid to this…
At this point, turn off the heat and stir until the soap base is completely dissolved. This should take no more than 2-3 minutes. If you need to, turn the heat back on for a bit more melting action.
Once the soap base is completely melted, remove it from the heat altogether. Add in the honey and stir to completely incorporate it.
I had a darker-colored honey from our backyard bees, and I thought it added a nice color to the soap. If you’d like, feel free to add a few drops of yellow soap colorant to enhance the “honey” color of the soap.
At this point, with the soap melted, honey mixed in and oil or colors added (if using), this goat’s milk and honey soap is ready to go into the mold. Pour the liquid soap base into a silicone soap mold of your choice.
I’m using this round honey bee mold, but there are a lot of great honey-themed soap mold choices out there. This one is particularly elaborate, and I really love the detail. You could also use a goat-themed soap mold to take things in a different direction.
A one-pound soap recipe makes 10 small round bars using the mold I chose. Unfortunately, the mold only holds 6, so the rest stays in the double boiler to be remelted gently in an hour when these have set.
Allow the soap to set in the molds for about 45 minutes to an hour. If you’re in a hurry, placing them in the fridge or freezer will really speed things up and you can have soap ready to come out of the molds in as little as 15 minutes.
At this point, if you have more soap mix in your double boiler, re-melt it gently and pour it into the mold. Most soap molds hold about 1 pound of soap, mine was just extra small.
Once dry the soaps are ready to gift or use. Melt and pour soaps are high in glycerine, which makes them extra luxurious, but it also means that they’ll attract moisture if left out for extended periods.
If you’re gifting them, try wrapping them in tissue paper and packaging them in these screw-top 4-ounce salve tins. They’re a bit deeper than the standard tin which will accommodate for the soap’s extra height.
Those same tins also work great for small chocolates and homemade lotion bars. Once you’ve got a cute honey bee silicone mold, might as well make use of it in more ways than one, right?
