Coconut Milk and Lemon Balm Soap

I like to document my soap making experiments as anyone who has been reading here for a while would already know. Recently I came across lemon balm growing in the garden which the CEO thought he had pulled out years ago as it was spreading too much so I picked some and infused it in olive oil to use in my next batch of soap before it disappeared from the face of the earth.

I had come across a recipe for Lemongrass and Coconut Milk recently so thought I might add some coconut milk to the batch to see how it reacted. I have made Goat's Milk Soap before and it turned out really well but wasn't sure what it would be like to work with coconut milk. 

 I read that it is preferable to use a milk that doesn't have any additional ingredients so the only one I came across in a decent size was TCC Coconut Milk which only had coconut extract and water listed. So I put the milk into a container and froze it prior to making the soap. 

I used the room temperature method for this batch. I weighed and poured the oils into a saucepan and had my fragrance oil ready to add as well as about 1T poppy seeds. I forgot to let the coconut milk thaw a little. Oops! It has been a while since I used milk in soap so it slipped my mind. Anyway I had already started adding the lye to the milk before I remembered that little fact and it did take a while to melt but eventually it did. So then it was added to the oils and stirred in. I wasn't sure if it would go to trace quickly so just stirred with a spoon for a while then added the fragrance oil and used the stick blender to bring it to trace before adding the poppy seeds.

It really behaved so it was poured into the mould and I didn't cover it to prevent it from heating up.

However it did crack at one stage but is fine now.

I am not sure what the white flecks are but perhaps it is from the milk although it was mixed in well. Who knows with soap...it is always full of surprises! This batch smells lovely as I used the rest of the Lemongrass and Persian Lime fragrance oil with Dragons Blood No.4 (strange name eh?) Anyway despite the name it smells really nice. I didn't realise it when I bought it but it has some vanilla in it so the soap is darker than normal milk soap but I don't mind. 

Here is the recipe I used if anyone is interested:

Coconut Milk and Lemon Balm Soap. 

450g Lemon Balm infused olive oil

250g Rice Bran Oil

300g Coconut Oil

142g Lye

380g Coconut Milk

31g   Lemongrass and Persian Lime FO combined with Dragons Blood No.4 (bought from Gavin's Little Green Workshops.)

So these are the last four batches I have made. On the top left hand side is Calendula Soap with Green Clay, next to it is Oatmeal Stout Soap and if you click on the link you can see how that has darkened since it was made due to the vanilla in the fragrance oil, on the bottom left is this current batch with the last batch which was Soap with Pink and Green Clay. I quite like the colours you get with the clays so will experiment some more with natural colours. Unfortunately in my experience when I have used plants for colouring e.g in the Nettle Soap, it does fade but you can buy natural colourants from the soap suppliers like Aussie Soap Supplies and Heirloom Body Care. Of course Gavin's Little Green Workshops has stock as well.

So that will probably be my last batch for the year although there are around five weeks left before 2017 is launched so perhaps there is still time to do another experiment :-) A friend is sending me activated charcoal so that will be another learning curve. I can't imagine what it would be like to use black soap but it sounds like fun. 

Are YOU making soap this weekend?