Coffee & Cream Soap

I made this soap to try out a few things - mixing 2 batches of soap together - for swirls, color variation, or maybe each one could be different mixes. Each batch has a different liquid, color, and purpose.

Coffee Portion:
8 oz. Lard
4 oz. Olive Oil
4 oz. Coconut Oil
5.5 oz. Strong Coffee
2.25 oz. Lye

Goat Milk Portion:
8 oz. Lard
4 oz. Olive Oil
4 oz. Coconut Oil
5.5 oz. Goat Milk
2.25 oz. Lye

- Put oils in a crock pot or double boiler and allow to melt. Heat it to 90-120 degrees F.
- Slowly pour lye into your coffee, or frozen milk. I had used frozen the goat milk (using ice cube trays) for my goat milk portion. Or you can measure out the liquid you need into plastic bags and freeze those. The idea is, you don't want to burn the milk, which can happen easily with things that contain sugars. Lye and water can heat up to 200 degrees. This can burn the milk and turn and turn your soap brown. Ice baths can help too.
- Let the lye and liquid mix cool to the same temperature you have your oil, whatever that is, somewhere between 90-120 degrees F. I had personally taken all the precautions possible on my firsts batch NOT to burn the coffee or the goat's milk, and found my liquid was pretty cool. Sometimes if you just go ahead and take them out of an ice bath you might be using, and stir a bit, it can start to warm up. I ended up needing to bring my oils down to about 80 degrees, which is pretty low. You can if needed warm the liquid in a microwave, just take it slow. As long as the oils and your lye mix are within 10 degrees of each other you should be ok.
- Once they're at the temperatures you want, put the oil in a bowl (glass, heat resistant plastic, or stainless steel - do not use aluminum, cast iron, or copper).
- Mix these together till they reach light trace (if you took a spoon or something and tried to trace a snaky line, it would stay). This looks a bit like pudding. When trying to mix two or more batches together though, you might want to have your trace very thin.
- If you want you can add other things at this time.
- I poured both batches into my mold at the same time so I could get a gentle swirl effect, then left alone for over 24 hours.
- Once firm enough, it can be removed from the mold and left to cure for 4-6 weeks.