Lemon Poppyseed Soap with Goat Milk

This lemon poppyseed soap with goat milk is perfect for summer cleansing and exfoliation!

We are big fans of exfoliating soap around here. It’s such an essential part of skin care that often gets overlooked – especially with husbands and kids. 😉

But when you make your own soap, it’s easy to build that exfoliating aspect of hygiene right into everybody’s shower time – by making soap with exfoliating components!

One of my all-time favorite exfoliating bars is coffee scrub soap. That’s a great one to have on hand for morning showers – it’ll really wake you up!

For more gentle exfoliation, oatmeal soap is perfect! And our oatmeal lavender goat milk soap combines that gentleness with the equally gentle scent of lavender, and we take the skin-care benefits of oatmeal up a notch by adding goat milk.

But today, we’re here to talk about lemon-poppyseed goat milk soap.

This soap recipe uses poppyseed as the exfoliant component, which, because they are round, are surprisingly gentle.

And the lemon? I just couldn’t resist making a bar that reminds me of my favorite treat as a kid – lemon-poppyseed bread! Even if I haven’t made that bread in years, at least I have an awesome grain-free lemon poppyseed muffin recipe.

The bright, clean scent of lemon is perfect for summertime, not only because it’s the most appropriate scent for this time of year, but because we all seem to be extra dirty with all the garden work and outdoor play, and lemon essential oil is known as one of the best agents for lifting and removing dirt.

A great addition to soap, don’t you think?

Because soap is so easy to make in large enough batches to keep you supplied for months, I like to focus on the gift-giving opportunities of homemade soap, and this lemon-poppyseed soap will be a hit among your friends thanks to it’s uniqueness, appealing look, and lovely smell.

Most people don’t know that goat milk is incredibly nourishing for their skin, and may not understand when you brag “and it’s made with goat milk!”, but as the alpha-hydroxy acids work their magic on their skin as they wash, they’ll fall in in love with your homemade soap, and never want to go back to drugstore versions, which makes it 100% worth hunting down some goat milk for your soap, which we’ll address below. But if you decide not to use goat milk, swap in filtered water and you’ll be good to go.

Tools and supplies

The recipe is perfect for the 42 ounce rectangular soap mold. This will make enough bars for personal use and some to give away.

Goat Milk

When we think about buying goat milk, most of us start thinking about local farms. But even if you don’t have a local goat dairy to source from, most mainstream grocery stores give us three options to choose from:

• Fresh goat milk, right alongside regular cow milk.
• Canned, in the baking aisle, near the evaporated and sweetened condensed milk, and
• Powdered, with the more well-known powdered cow milk.

Whichever way you choose, make sure your milk is just this side of being frozen solid before you mix it with lye. This keeps the lye from scorching your milk and leaves you with a lighter, creamier bar.

Granulated Lye

I find that lye granules are much easier to dissolve than beads, so I try to stick to the granules when I can. I’m currently using Red Crown, which is specifically for soap making, and like it a lot.

Oils/Fats

Isn’t it crazy that we use soap, which is made from oil, to remove and clean oil from our dirty hands? The saponification process when combined with the lye is a beautiful thing.

• I like to use some coconut oil (use cheaper, expeller-pressed cooking oil rather than extra virgin) for a hard bar and to help bring the soap to a trace quickly,
• olive oil for a stable lather and conditioning, a
• And then either canola, soy, or sunflower oil for the same reasons as the olive, but much cheaper. I know how controversial seed oils are – especially those that come from typically genetically modified crops, but for soap making, which chemically changes the oils, I feel safe using these.

Essential oils

In my opinion, Young Living essential oils are the safest, highest quality oils to use both topically and internally, however, Now brand oils have been show to be high quality as well, and I feel safe using them in cold process soap making. Definitely do your research and use the oils you are most comfortable with.

When you think about it, there really is only three ingredients you really need for soap making – milk (or water), lye, and oil/fat. The essential oils are optional, but even with them, that’s only four ingredients.

Honestly, and actually lemon-poppyseed bread recipe would be more complicated than this, so let’s make this soap!

Lemon-Poppyseed Soap with Goat Milk

Ingredients: 

• 12 oz. ice cold goat milk
• 4 oz. granulated lye
• 8 oz. coconut oil (expeller pressed coconut oil is often cheaper and just as effective for soap)
• 8 oz. olive oil
• 16 oz. vegetable/soybean oil
• 1 Tablespoon lemon essential oil
• 3 Tablespoons poppyseed

Instructions:

1. Measure out your ingredients precisely by weight. I use a food scale like this one.
   
   
2. Freeze milk in a non-reactive bowl – either glass or high-quality stainless steel – until nearly frozen solid.
3. In a well-ventilated place – preferably outside – sprinkle lye granules on top of milk, and stir with a non-reactive spoon or spatula until the lye is dissolved.
4. Let mixture sit and cool until it reaches about 100 degrees.
5. In the meantime, melt the oil, and cool to 100 degrees. I like to use an instant infrared thermometer, but a candy thermometer will work as well.
   
   
6. When the temperatures match, gently pour the oil into the milk/lye mixture.
7. Mix with an immersion blender for about 15 minutes until your soap mixture reaches a trace. If you’re not sure what a trace is, read this article with descriptive pictures.
8. Stir in lemon essential oil.
9. Next, add poppyseed, and stir in with a spoon as the immersion blender can break the seeds.
   
10. Pour soap mixture into a prepared mold. I use this one, which makes it easy to unfold the soap when it’s finished.
    
    
11. Carefully move your full mold to a place where it can sit undisturbed for at least 24 hours.
    
12. Cover with a cardboard or plastic box, and then with a towel or blanket to insulate.
13. After 24-48 hours, you can remove your soap from the molds.
    
    
14. Place soap back in a place where it won’t be disturbed, and let cure for at least three weeks before using to complete the saponification process, sweat, and become harder.
15. Enjoy your lemon poppyseed soap with goat milk!