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Impressive looking, but simple enough for beginners, this easy pumpkin spice soap smells divine, and would make a perfect autumn gift.
Now that autumn has finally arrived, along with its cooler nights and shorter days, I'm already thinking about Halloween and Thanksgiving and all of the pumpkin and apple spice recipes that accompany them.
Last year, around this time, I had begun playing with making different types of soaps, and had a great idea for making an easy pumpkin spice soap, but couldn't find the ingredients, mainly some spice essential oils, that I wanted to use anywhere nearby. I figured that if I ordered them online, pumpkin spice soap time would have already passed by the time that I could actually use the soap. My reasoning? While the saponification process, the process in which all of the lye and oils have chemically combined and made soap, completes within the first few days after making soap, you should wait a few weeks, for your soap to harden, before you actually use it. Otherwise the soap will be soft and will get used up too quickly.
This year, though, I'm better prepared. I bought the oils that I wanted to use to spice up my soap, and made a lovely soap with pumpkin and goat milk to bring in autumn.
Pumpkin and goat milk both add a little color to the soap, and they also add some hydration and richness. As for the spices, I chose to use both the dried spices themselves and the essential oils. The spices add a dark color to the soap, along with a beautiful aroma, and also add a very mild exfoliation. While I love this soap, and the way it smells, it is worth mentioning that the spices and their oils may be irritating for some people with sensitive skin.
If you have never made soap before, don't worry. This soap is very simple to make. I purposely based this soap recipe on my beginner soap recipe. My beginner soap is a tried and true recipe that only uses simple, easy to find oils, and has a relatively long working time, so you should have plenty of time to add in your oils, spices, and can try to swirl them together like I did. Because you are working with milk, and are swirling two parts of the soap together, it is a bit more complicated than the other recipe. So, if you are nervous about it, begin with the other recipe. If you are adventurous, though, give this one a try! If you follow the directions carefully, even as a beginner, you shouldn't have any problems.
As with all soap recipes, be very careful when working with lye and solutions using it!
Use protective eyewear and gloves, and mix your lye into your water, and not the other way around! It's also a good idea to mix the ingredients outside or in a well ventilated area. You can read more tips on my beginner soap recipe.
OK, with all of that said, let's make some easy pumpkin spice soap!!
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Easy Pumpkin Spice Soap
Easy Pumpkin Spice Soap
Ingredients
- 100 g sweet almond oil 3.5 oz.
- 100 g coconut oil 3.5 oz.
- 400 g olive oil 14.1 oz.
- 80 g lye 2.8 oz.
- 100 ml goat milk either fresh or reconstituted from powdered
- 100 ml water
- 45 g pumpkin 1.6 oz., I made my own puree
- 1 tsp. coconut sugar or any brown sugar
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 Tbsp. cinnamon
- 1 tsp. nutmeg
- 1 tsp. ground cloves
- clove essential oil & cinnamon and ginger essential oils
Instructions
- Mix together the water and goat milk. Then make your lye solution by adding the lye into the mixture of water and goat milk. Because adding lye causes the temperature to rise quickly, to prevent the milk from scalding, mix them together over a pan of ice and water. I also froze the goat milk, just to be sure, but if you are careful about mixing over ice, that shouldn't be necessary. Your solution will probably turn slightly orange-yellow; that is a normal reaction of goat milk and lye.
- Once your solution is thoroughly mixed, allow it to rest while you get together your other ingredients. We want the heating and cooling process to complete before adding the lye solution into the oils.
- Mix together your almond, coconut, and olive oil in a large bowl.
- Prepare your molds by oiling them. You don't need to use professional soap molds. My favorite mold is a silicone loaf pan, but I have also successfully used plastic food containers.
- Add the sugar and salt to the lye solution.
- Add the lye solution to the oil mixture, and gently mix them together.
- Once you have the lye solution incorporated into the oils, you can begin to carefully mix them together with a hand blender. While you can do this part by hand, it would take much longer. We are looking to have the mixture thicken up like mayonnaise. If your lye mixture is cold when you begin mixing them, it will take a little longer to get the mixture to thicken. That will give you a little extra working time, too, if you are new to soap making.
- Partway through the mixing process, begin to mix in the pumpkin pureé.
- Now is the time to add in the essential oils or you can use fragrance oils, if you prefer. Certain essential oils, like clove oil, will cause your soap to thicken much more quickly, so be prepared, just in case. The amount of oil you add will depend a lot upon the oils you use, and your personal taste for how fragrant you want your soap to be. I added in somewhere between 5-10ml of oils overall, using mostly clove essential oil, a little less cinnamon, and a little less ginger, because that is my order of preference for those oils. You can experiment here, and use your nose to help guide you. 😉 If you are using a pumpkin spice blend, it may have vanilla, which will darken your soap, so you may choose to add it to only the half of your soap with the spice mixture.
- Once you start to get to a mayonnaise like texture, separate out ⅓ to ½ of your mixture. You will be adding your spices to part of your soap, creating a swirled soap with two different colors. Add in your spices to the ⅓ to ½ that you separated out.
- Begin to pour about half of the un-spiced soap into your molds.
- Add a layer of the spiced soap, followed by the rest of the un-spiced, and finishing up with the rest of the spiced soap.
- Using a spoon or some other utensil, poke into the soaps, reaching for the bottom layer and pulling the soap out over top, trying to gently swirl the soaps in certain places. You can also zigzag your way through the soap in places, to have the soaps gently swirl together, without mixing them into each other.
- Once you are happy with your swirling, allow the soap to rest for at least 24 hours. Your soap will heat up during this time. After 24 hours, you can begin to check on your soap to see if it can be gently unmolded. If it is too soft, wait another day or two and check on it again. Gently unfold it as soon as you can, and cut your bars into your desired shapes.
- Let your soap continue to set, dry out, and harden for about a month. To help the process, turn your soap every couple of days.
- Enjoy using it! It smells wonderful!!
Don't want to use goat milk? Just switch it for another 100ml of water.
I love this soap, and think it would make a great present for someone this fall, especially given in a beautiful soap saver exfoliating bag. You could buy one, or maybe we'll just have to make one someday soon. 😉
Too many ideas, too little time…
I tried your basic soap recipe and the results are curing now. Excited! I’m wondering, when you have time, could you please post on different ways to colour soap? Then I can just combine that with the basic recipe and then gift it to people. Thanks for all your great recipes!
Hi Anita,
Awesome! Waiting for the first batch is always the most exciting! 🙂
Sure- it’s something I’d definitely like to do.
I’m planning on reorganizing and fixing up my whole soap making section this fall, and that’s definitely one idea I had. I can definitely make it more of a priority now that I know that there is interest.
I did some experimentation with coloring with spices and completely natural colorings, but would also like to give more options that include iron oxides and micas.
I also want to add another recipe to this post that includes more coconut oil to make it harder and lather more.
I personally love this recipe, but some people want a really hard, more cleansing bar so I’d like to give another option for those who don’t mind having a shorter working time.
Can I use tap water instead of distilled water?
Hi Lisa,
While it’s normally fine, I say to use distilled water because the tap water in some areas will have impurities that can interfere with the soap or make it so that it doesn’t keep as well. If somebody has issues with a recipe, I like to be able to rule out the tap water as a source of the issue. 😉
I started reading this site in the hope that I could learn to make soap which did not incorporate palm oil. I was horrified to read the comments about using palm oil as an ingredient.
Before you use palm oil: please can everyone watch this You tube video about Rang Tan? https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/what-we-do/forests/rang-tan/
Hi Suzette,
Sure, there are many wonderful soaps that don’t use palm oil! In fact, I’ve actually never used it in soap making. I don’t recall the comments you are talking about, but it’s still an ingredient I haven’t used. I think it’s very good to raise awareness about the problems in the palm industry. I will say, though, that it’s almost impossible to avoid all products that use palm. I buy in an Eco Supermarket that claims to have no palm products, but then they do have surfactants in their natural cleaning section and most items don’t specifiy which surfactants have been used. Many people aren’t aware that most of the more natural surfactants do have some palm in their origin. (And, of course, surfactants are just about everywhere.) I’m going to assume that they are probably selling many products sourced from palm without realizing it.
While not perfect, there are palm certifications so that you can make sure that the ingredients used are as sustainable as possible, which is what I look for when sourcing any surfactants that may have some palm in them.
there are also humans that depend on palm oil to survive. do your research before we put animals before human life and sustainability
Thanks Zzzz
I’m Nigerian and major edible oil is palm.
My soaps use 6o-80%palm and they are great!
When people blast palm oil it makes me laugh because in my research about this, most of ‘their’ processed foods have palm in disguised forms. Plus the fact that we don’t have orang-utangs here and most other places that produce palm and it’s products.
Using one place/situation to blast an entire plant produce is highly ridiculous!
Hi Excelle,
I think the problem with palm is that the demand got high and us “outsiders” came in and started to exploit it.
I don’t think most people would be against someone in an area that has always used palm continue to use it in a responsible way.
I think a lot of people avoid using palm because they don’t want to contribute to that exploitation.
While I don’t eat processed foods normally, so I don’t really probably ingest palm oil (although I don’t have a problem with non-hydrogenized palm health-wise), Many (most?) surfactants have some palm in them somewhere in the process. I try to always make sure that mine have been marked as being sustainably sourced with certification.
I guess it’s up to each of us to use what we feel comfortable with. I don’t avoid palm 100% (nor do most people who think they do. 😉 ), but I try to make sure I find from sustainable sources. (That doesn’t just apply to palm.)
I’m sure palm makes a lovely soap. I love coconut oil for soap, and I’d assume they would behave in a very similar way.
Thank you for this recipe! I have been wanting to make my own soap for quite some time. Your recipe was the first I tried and it came out AMAZING! At first I thought the clove scent was too strong but after 6 weeks of curing, it is perfect!
Hi Vanessa,
Thank you so much! (And thank you for letting me know how it turned out!) I’m so happy to hear it turned out well for you!
Yes, fragrances definitely mellow with time, and in most cases, with natural scents, it’s hard to get them to stay around. Luckily these tend to be pretty fragrant and last well.
Hi! This may sound like a dumb question, Im from the Philippines and I wonder when you you said to dry out the soap, do you mean just indoors? It gets really hot out here and I’m thinking if i left it out under the sun, will that help in making it cure faster? Thank you so much!
Hi Trixie,
I dry mine indoors.
I’m not sure what would happen in the sun, but you wouldn’t really lower the cure time just by having it dry more quickly. The cure time is partly about drying time, but it is also about giving the crystalline structure of the soap time to restructure itself.
In any case, you are able to use the soap before then- it just will improve with time.
After a few days, normally the saponification process will have finished, so it’s safe to use your soap soon after having made it. It’s all about allowing it to improve. That doesn’t mean that you can’t use it earlier if you are feeling impatient. 😉
Hi Tracy,
Your soaps are wonderful and very inspirational!
In your recipe you call for 100ml of water and not distilled water. does it matter if it is distilled or not when it comes to adding milk to the recipe?
Hi Giselle,
I should probably update the recipe and say to use distilled water. When I first made soaps- including this soap, I only used our filtered water for drinking, and I never had any problems. In most cases, you can use regular filtered water for making bar soaps. The problem is that some people will have water that will have certain minerals or other substances that may give unwanted reactions or that “contaminate” the soap in some way or another.
I normally like to say to use distilled water, mostly just to be able to rule out any problems like that if the person is having issues.
So, while in most cases, it’s OK to use regular water, I still feel better about using distilled when possible.
How many bars does this recipe yield? I would like to make approximately 25. Thanks so much for sharing your recipe! I am really excited about trying it!
Hello!
It really depends on the molds you use and how big you want each bar to be.
I usually use a standard silicone loaf pan when making this recipe. My pan is around 9 inches (23 cm) long, so if I were to make each bar with a width of 3/4 of an inch (just under 2cm), I’d get around 12 bars of soap. If I wanted thicker bars, I’d get less. Keep in mind that they may slightly shrink down as they dry and cure.
I’d aim for somewhere between 2-3 batches for 25 bars.
This looks like a great recipe. Where did you get your stamp to label your soap?
Camellia-
Hi Camelia,
This is actually a stamp for fondant normally, but it works well in the first days after unmolding the soap. The letters are a bit small, though, so you have to be careful while stamping or you take out too much soap when you remove it.
Mine looks like this fondant stamp. It’s not perfect, but it works.
I like the look of this stamp better (it’s a bit of a pain to slide the letters into the other one), but it’s also more expensive, so I’m not sure if it’s worth the difference in price. It also may not be long enough for some projects.
What about using 200 ml goat milk instead of water? Would that work?
Hi Annelie,
You could try it. I normally like to use some water with it so that I can mix the lye with the water and have the milk in its frozen state. I want to avoid burning the milk. If you use frozen milk or at least milk in a slushy state, you probably would be fine. At the worst, it may brown slightly.
Hi Tracy,
I am so happy I found your video and recipe. It is just what I was looking for.I will be making my first soap and I have been looking for an easy recipe also I am trying right now so I don’t wish to use expensive oils. Do you have any specific recipe where I can use reasonable oils ( canola, rice bran oils,palm oil etc). I don’t have butter with me, can’t get Shea butter etc as well.
Where I stay coconut oil and olive oil is very expensive so I was just thinking about few other options.Pls do share your recipe ( gm measurement) only. You may email me recipes if you feel like it. I’ll be very thankful to you dear Tracy.
[email protected]
Thank you
Priyanka
Hi Priyanka,
Most vegetable oils don’t make a very good bar of soap. They will make softer bars of soap that may get brown spots quickly and that don’t cleanse very well. Coconut oil and olive oil are the exceptions, and either can make a decent soap even without the use of any other oils.
You can use other vegetable oils as part of a recipe, but in lesser amounts and in conjunctions with some other fat that will make a harder, more cleansing bar of soap.
Are you opposed to using animal fats? The only alternative I can think of, if you don’t want to use coconut or olive oil, is to use either lard or tallow. Those fats could be combined with other oils to make a decent bar of soap. Palm oil should work decently too, but I’ve never personally used it.
I should elaborate that not only do different oils make different type soaps, but that each will need a different amount of lye. So, you can’t just switch out the fats in a recipe, you’d need to run the numbers in a lye calculator.
I’ve made this soap a couple of times but I find it seems to dissolve quite quickly. After one use in the water it had a lot of little pin holes through the whole bar. I’ve let it harden for 6 weeks before using it. What am I doing wrong?
Hi Ida-
Hmmm, that’s interesting, and something I’ve never heard before. I had bars of that soap last for forever, and that never happened to me.
Do your bars feel hard before using them?
This soap does use a lot of olive oil, and olive oil based soaps really do benefit from a long curing time. Some people wait for a year before they use soaps like a pure Castile soap or an Aleppo soap.
So, I was going to suggest letting it cure longer- but I feel like there must be something wrong with the bar itself if you are getting actual holes in it! That shouldn’t happen even with freshly made soap!
Is there a way you can send me a picture by email to [email protected] so I can see it and maybe we can try to troubleshoot the problem better?
Sounds like air bubbles have gotten mixed into your soap – make sure when mixing you’re not incorporating air into the soap & when pouring into molds use rubbing alcohol & spray it over soap – hopefully this helps
Thanks, Kim! 🙂
This is so beautiful! I want to make it for Christmas gifts, but I don’t have a lot of time for curing before Christmas, so I wanted to use a ready made goat’s milk soap base. Is this possible, and, if so, how much soap base would I use with the remainder of the ingredients?
Hi Inger,
I’m sure you’d be able to do it by using, by weight, the amount of soap that corresponds to the oils+lye+water+milk in the recipe. That said, if you were to make them this week, you’d still be able to give away a nice homemade gift.
The month waiting period is a guideline. The soap in a month has time to harden so that it won’t be so soft that it gets used up quickly. It also gives it time to continue some slower chemical reactions in the soap so that the soap improves.
All of that said, in a couple of weeks, the saponification process will have completed, and you’ll definitely have a useable and pretty soap. I’d just let everybody know that the soap is recently made and will improve with time. 😉
Hello, I am new to soap making and would like to try making this for holiday gifts, but I’m confused about the instruction to freeze the goat’s milk. Do you measure the amount needed, then freeze it solid? Then do you thaw it again before combining the goat’s milk and lye? I am using fresh, not powdered, goat’s milk. Thanks so much!
Hi Sara,
I used fresh milk too!
Yes, you measure out the milk and then freeze it. You keep it frozen when you mix with the lye (so, no, don’t thaw it!) to keep the milk from burning. You’ll find that lye has a strong reaction even when mixed with water. It heats up a lot.
When mixing with something with sugar in it, like milk, though, it can heat up too much and can ruin the milk. That’s why you freeze it.
I’m planning on making a goats milk recipe soon, and will make a video of the process so that people will have a better idea of what to look for. Meanwhile, though, I’ll try to be around to answer any questions you may have on the way!
Hello Tracy,
I neglected to leave a comment when I made your “Easy Pumpkin Spice Soap” recipe back on January 8th, 2016. In the past 2.5 years I have made approximately 35 different batches of soaps, all different recipes. I have 2 favourites, one of them being your Pumpkin Spice. It is a beautiful soap. It hardened very hard and the smell was wonderful and is so very very pretty. I pureed carrots, didn’t have pumpkin in the house at that time. Tomorrow I am making this beautiful soap again, using pumpkin this time, tis the season. So I am stopping by to say thank you for sharing your recipe Tracy and to tell you how much I enjoy your website.
Have a great week Tracy.
Darlene
Nova Scotia
Hi Darlene,
Awww- Thanks so much for your comment! I really appreciate it when I find out somebody has made and loved one of my recipes!
Yes, this was also one of my favorite soaps, despite it’s overall simplicity when it comes to the oils in the recipe. I purposely left it that way to help introduce the more complex idea of working with goats milk without changing up too many things from the beginner soap recipe. I guess I wanted people to gain confidence in being able to add in new ingredients so that they can make the soap that they want.
I hope it goes well for you! Next time I make it, I may add a touch of achiote powder to add a natural orange coloring.
May you have a wonderful week too!
Regarding this pumpkin recipe with goats milk, did you insulate durning the first 24 hours or are you leaving it uncovered?
Thank you!
Hi Violet,
I think I did at the time because back then I used to insulate all of them, just in case. Now I rarely do so anymore, unless it’s a soap in which I want ti to specifically be a bright color or something. There are soaps that benefit from going through a “gel” stage which is accomplished by keeping them hot through insulation in the first hours of curing. I don’t really think it would matter much either way for a soap like this one.
might be a dumb question but i was wondering if the utensils you’re using are only for soap making, or do you also use them in the kitchen once you’re done?
Hi Dani,
No, it’s not a dumb question at all!
Some people are very picky about only using their utensils for soap making.
I personally don’t think that it’s necessary and I use mine in the kitchen later on. In the end, you are making soap, so if you don’t mind using utensils that have come in contact with soap, you should be fine using them. 😉
Obviously, people who use separate utensils are worried about having unreacted lye on their utensils, but if you’ve made the soap right, the lye will have all reacted after a few days and will become soap. Even if you haven’t made the soap right, and you have lye on your utensils, you can clean them off with water and then afterwards with vinegar to react with any leftover lye if that makes you feel safer.
Lye is actually used in food production. It is used to cure olives, and make crusty pretzels. It isn’t that it is really poisonous, but is very corrosive because of how alkaline it is. You don’t want to touch or eat it directly.
I throw everything through the dishwasher before using it again, and I’m OK with that.
Everybody needs to do what they feel is best for them, though, and I understand how some people feel more comfortable using separate utensils just to be on the safe side.
i guess i should have made sure i had thought of all the questions i would have for you – can i skip the ginger EO as its one i dont have – will it make that much of a difference to the perfume – and – is it right that if you freeze your goats milk before adding the lye to it – it stops the milk from burning with the heat created by the lye????thanks
Hi Liz,
Thanks! Yes, I really like this soap. It’s still a very simple and easy to make soap, but start to test out working with new ingredients like milk, and has a long working time, so you can add in the spices and play with trying to swirl a soap without it getting too hard on you right away.
Yes, you understood right the part about freezing the milk. Just as mixing water and lye will give you a solution that will heat up pretty quickly, so will mixing lye with milk. The sugars in the milk can burn from that heat, but if you freeze the milk, it helps keep it from heating up enough to burn it. I also used an ice bath around the mixing vessel. Doing both may be an overkill, but I like to err on the side of doing too much. 😉
As for the ginger EO, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I think it’s the one I used the least in the mix. Some pumpkin spice mixes include ginger, some don’t. I used a lot more of it in the gingerbread soap, of course.
I don’t think it will make too much of a difference at all. Just mix the others to your liking. The cloves and cinnamon give off a very strong scent, and you probably won’t miss the ginger at all.
And good luck! This has always been one of my favorites.
Can this soap be made with Hot Process method
Hi Brenda,
You should be able to make this soap using the hot process method, but I’m a bit curious as to why you would want to.
It really only makes for an uglier bar of soap, is a much messier process, and is a bit of a waste of energy in my opinion.
Either method makes a soap that “can” be used within a couple of days (the saponification process is finished immediately with the hot process and within 2-3 days with the cold process), but that shouldn’t be used for at least several weeks. The soap will continue to harden and improve with time in either case. I’ve never really understood why some people like the hot process method so much because I don’t really see it having any benefit. I personally hate it. 😉
wow – this looks amazing – i am new to soap and this sounds right down my track – will read and read your instructions and look at the queries you have just to make sure i do it right – i love the smells of autumn and spices – thanks again
This looks so lovely! Thank you for the head’s up about some essential oils causing the soap to thicken more quickly. That’s interesting/good to know!
Hi Natasha,
With this recipe, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem because I used a recipe that I knew had a pretty extended working time. That said, it could make a huge difference in a soap that already has less working time.
If you end up making the recipe, I hope it all goes well for you. This us still probably one of my favorites- even now that I make more of a variety of recipes. 😉
I want tomorrow today butdont have the essential oils? Will it still have the good scent if I just use the spices?
Hi Nicky,
I don’t think you’ll be happy with the amount of scent it has without any essential oils. I haven’t tried it.
That said, I often make unscented bars of soap without any oils and I’m happy with them. If you are specifically looking to make a scented bar, I doubt that the spices alone would be enough to make a lasting scent. I may be wrong, though. I’ve personally never tried it.
If you do give it a go, I’d love to hear how it goes.
My wife is allergic to coconut oil can you make a suggestion of what we can replace it with?
Thanks
Hi Rylee,
With soap recipes, you have to be careful about making oil substitutions. Any changes have to be run through a lye calculator because different oils react to the lye in different measures. Plus, they each add different qualities to the soap. Coconut oil is a great oil in soaps for adding cleansing and bubbly lather qualities. It also works to make a harder bar of soap.
That said, I did a bit of investigation, and Babassu oil is what is usually suggested for people with coconut allergies. I couldn’t find any other oils with similar cleansing properties to coconut oil. Using another oil would make this already conditioning soap be even more conditioning/less cleansing. Some people are OK with that, but most like to feel “clean” after using soap. 🙂 I realize it is a less common oil, and harder to find, but it really is the perfect substitution. Coconut oil is so widely used in soap recipes because it has properties unlike most other oils.
I ran it through the lye calculator, and, interestingly enough, you can substitute it one for one in this recipe. So, if you use 100g of Babassu oil in place of the 100g of coconut oil, you can still use 80g of lye to make your soap. I hope that helps! 🙂
Hi!! Loved this recipe and im in attempt of doing it, but im a little bit scare of the milk-lye combination, could i just use the total amount of milk-water but only water? I mean no adding no milk? (Sorry for my english) thank you in advance
Hello,
Yes! That’s completely fine!
Sorry I took so long to get back to you. We were away on vacation and just got home.
Good luck. 🙂
Thank-you, Tracy, for your quick and helpful reply. I am hopeful that the soap can be saved!
After 24 hours my Pumpkin spice soap has not hardened. It is in my wooden mold with the lid on loose. I am not new to soap making but, it is only my second attempt using frozen canned Goats Milk. I had some trouble keeping the milk/water/lye solution and the oil mix at the proper temp before combining. It did reach a mayo consistency at trace so I assumed all was well. Does it just need more time or is it a loss? Help! Please.
Hi Sue,
Well, it’s hard for me to tell without seeing it and having been there, but there is a good chance that things will work out with time. Sometimes it does take a little longer for the soap to harden, and all works out well in the end. (Somebody else wrote me with a similar situation, and their soap did turn out well, so I hope the same goes for you.)
If you did reach a mayo consistency, and did reach trace, you should end up with soap.
If the soap turns out very soft, it could mean that there was a problem with not enough lye/a problem with the lye itself. If you end up with a very soft soap it’s because there is fat leftover after the saponification process (aka your soap is highly “superfatted”). In most cases even if there is a bit too much fat, the soap will be usable, it just takes a long time for it to harden, and it may end up always being a bar of soap that is on the softer side (albeit very hydrating).
Wait to unmold it until it hardens a little more. It may take even weeks for it to harden if you have too much fat for the amount of lye for some reason, but you should be able to unmold it before that.
I hope it works out well for you!! (fingers crossed!!)
Thank you for showing us how to make this soap. It has all the ingredients I love. I just want to know why is lye used, and is it bad for you. I take it that it isn’t, but I was wondering. Also, does this soap leave soap scum? I was just wondering. Thanks for your answers.
Hi Carmen,
Lye is a very strong base which is necessary for the chemical reaction (saponification) that results in soap. Without it soap cannot be made, period. There is a lot of confusion floating around because some people say they have recipes for “lye free” soaps, but that terminology is really misleading because they use a pre-made soap base where the reaction with lye has already been done for them and then add other ingredients to that. They aren’t really making soap (it was already made), and the soap wasn’t lye free- they just saved themselves the step of working with the lye themselves.
Is lye bad for you?
Well, the best way I can explain it is that it is very corrosive until you mix it with the oils. We’re used to thinking of what happens with strong acids (very low pH), but aren’t as familiar with strong bases (very high pH), but they are also corrosive. It’s not so much that it is toxic- because, if you think about it, there are foods that are made with lye. Most olives are cured in lye, and soft pretzels often get a lye bath before baking to give them their characteristic texture. The problem, though, is its corrosive nature. If it gets on your skin it can burn you, and you definitely don’t want it in your eyes. If you were to drink it, I’m guessing it could probably kill you by burning your tissues.
So, yes, you do have to respect it and be very careful when working with lye, but once it has reacted with the other ingredients to make soap, you no longer have a caustic chemical, so you shouldn’t be afraid of it. If you calculate the soap to have too much lye, meaning that some is left over after the saponification process, the soap can be too basic and can irritate your skin. With liquid soaps you can “neutralize” them by adding a bit of acid to the final soap to balance things out.
I hope that helps clear up the question of lye. Personally, I feel more comfortable about using soap (which is always made with lye) than a detergent or shower gel that is made up of many questionable chemicals.
As for the soap scum, I’m not really sure how to answer that. I’m guessing that is going to be dependent upon the hardness of your water, the surfaces of wherever you are using it, and what you use to clean up afterwards on a day to day basis. I actually read up on soap scum because it isn’t something that I notice having much of an issue with, and it appears that it tends to go along with bars of soap, and that liquid soaps don’t cause it as much. I’ve been working on making liquid soaps lately, and those recipes should be on the blog soon if you are interested. I want to use the soaps for a little while more before posting, though, just to make sure that I think they are blog worthy.
Hi Tracy, thanks so much for sharing this recipe and providing such beautifully detailed instructions! I love the scent and have made a batch for Christmas presents. I did make a change to the oils used in order to get a beautiful deep pumpkin orange color. I used 75 g Sweet Almond Oil; 100 g Olive Oil; 125 g Coconut Oil; and 300 g Red Palm Oil (sustainably sourced from Ecuador).
Hi Carolyn,
Thanks so much for the tips! I love hearing what works out well for other people, and that’s a great idea to use palm oil to help add a bit of color.
At the time I originally wrote this recipe, I didn’t even think to try to color it. I was so dead set against not using artificial colors of any type, that it didn’t even occur to me to try to naturally color the soap. I don’t really like brightly colored soaps, but do like pretty, natural looking colored soaps.
Since then, I have considered maybe trying to add in a bit of paprika to give it a subtle orange hue, but it hadn’t even occurred to me to try palm oil- genius! I bet it gives the perfect color, too!
I’ve been thinking about doing a post experimenting with different natural colorings. I think it would be a fun experiment.
Something about this time of year that makes me want to make soap again- and it isn’t even just to make Christmas presents. 😉
Just yesterday I made two batches of liquid soap that I want to use for projects for around the house (and eventually the blog). I guess it’s addicting. hahaha
Hi again,
I didn’t mean to leave such a terse message above, but Chrome froze up and in clicking around, I accidentally submitted my partial post 🙂 Sorry! The batch I made first is curing to a pretty dark orange, so I tried another batch today using 75 g Sweet Almond Oil; 125 g Olive Oil; 150 g Coconut Oil; and 250 g Red Palm Oil (sustainably sourced from Ecuador). It seems a bit lighter which I prefer. I might continue to back off the amount of the Red Palm Oil until I find the amount that gives me the most pleasing pumpkin color.
Thanks again for all of your interesting posts, I can’t wait to hear about the results of the natural coloring’s. I am with you in preferring to use all natural ingredients.
Are you kidding? I loved your message. 🙂
Your tips are also very helpful- especially considering that others have commented that they would like to make an orange colored pumpkin spice soap.
I’d love to hear the final recipe when you get one that turns out how you like it- I may update the post with notes about how you made it with palm oil to get a color you were happy with – and with the proportions you used, if that is OK with you.
I think some people miss important comments when there are a lot to look through as there are on this post. Commenting about it within the post would help others find your wonderful idea!
OK, I will let you know when I get a mix that I like best and I am totally fine with you sharing the idea in your recipe. I ound my red palm oil at a deep discount at my grocer recently, so have a lot to play with. More to come!
Is it possible to make this soap without lye?
Hi Ritu,
It is impossible to make any soap from scratch without lye.
If you are afraid to work with lye yourself, you can buy melt-and-pour soaps and add spices and other ingredients to those. When you buy melt and pour soaps, the reaction between the lye and the oils has already been done for you. Because it is so much cheaper to make your own, I’ve never worked with them, so I can’t give you exact measurements. You’d have to experiment a bit.
As long as you take precautions to protect yourself, though, working with lye isn’t as scary as people make it out to be.
I hope that helps.
Looks very interesting. I’ve never made soap before. Where do you get your ingredients?
Hi Tina,
I just buy the ingredients at my local stores. They aren’t that difficult to find. Here in Spain it used to be difficult to find coconut oil, but now it can be found at health food stores. That is also where I usually find most of my essential oils.
As for the lye, you can usually find it in the section of either hardware stores or supermarkets where drain cleaners are found because it is often used as such.
If you do have problems finding any of the ingredients, I have linked to most of the ingredients on Amazon for easy finding. They are affiliate links which means that if you do order anything from those links, I earn a small percentage back, but they don’t charge you any more.
Happy soap making! 🙂
I love this post. I going to try this out today it will be the second time I am making homemade soap. any important suggestions? I do wish there was a video so I can see the steps you took. Thanks for this cool webpage!
Hi Ashby,
Thank you so much!
I can’t think of anything to add. I hope is goes well for you and that you enjoy it. This is my favorite soap, I think.
Making a video is a good idea and something I should consider. I tend to stay away from videos because my kitchen is usually a disaster area when I’m making projects for the blog, but I guess people enjoy seeing the realities of the “behind the scenes” anyway. 😉
Do you think this would work in the crock pot? If so, any suggestions?
Hi Shannon,
I really only use a crock pot if I’m going to make a liquid soap or glycerine. I see no real need to go through the hassle of using the crock pot for soap making otherwise. I know some people do use the crock pot to try to have usable soap more quickly because the theory is that hot process soaps will harden faster. The problem is there is a lot of conflicting information on the topic, so I prefer to let the soaps sit for 1 month before using them anyway.
I don’t have a lot of advice to give you about hot processing the soap because I just don’t do it. I don’t like having to watch soap cook if I don’t need to, and hot process soap doesn’t tend to be as smooth as this cold process soap is.
If you really want to use your crock pot for making this soap, though, you should be able to follow the guidelines that are used for hot processing any other soap.
I asked a question earlier, but how long do the soaps last?
Hi Courtney,
The soap can be used earlier than the month, but they will be very soft and won’t last as long when you are trying to use them because they will be soft. As long as you have the measurements right, the soap really is safe to use after a couple of days. By that time the saponification process should be complete, so it is possible to use it much sooner. When you wait a month, the water evaporates and gives you a much harder bar of soap which will alter more and last longer.
As for how long it lasts?
Do you mean how long you can keep it before it goes bad?
The ideal time for gifting a soap is probably around 6-8 weeks after making it. By that point you have a hard bar of soap that still has a strong fragrance. With time, the scent can diminish depending upon the soap. I think that is really the main factor to determine if the soap is “good” for using because after that point the soap is still usable, but isn’t as pleasant. I still have some bars of pumpkin spice soap from last year’s batch, and they still smell wonderful and work very well.
I hope that helps!
hey! is there anyway the soap can be ready in less than a month?
What amount of essential oils did you put in?
Hi Sarah,
Well, to be honest, despite my best intentions to try to count drops to try to put them in a recipe, I’ve never been able to do it. Each of the bottles seems to drop at a different rate and is probably dispensing a different amount. I try to add the oils quickly so as not to have a problem with the soap setting up too quickly, too, so I let them drop in pretty quickly.
Each time I make soaps, I just let my nose be the guide. In my experience, the strength of the scent when you make the soap is a pretty good indication of what the final soap will smell like too.
Can I use all goat milk and omit the water? Thanks
Hi Anthony,
Yes, you can use all goat milk as long as you keep the total non-oil liquid amount the same.
The reason I chose to use a mix of milk and water is because I wanted this to be more of a beginner recipe that uses milk. Milk is trickier to work with than water because it reacts with the lye and can burn, causing discoloration and an undesirable smell. It can also have a bit of a violent reaction if it heats up too much.
As long as you work with frozen milk, and make sure to keep the temperature down, you should be OK.
If you try it, I’d love to hear how it goes!
Hi Tracy! I stumbled upon this post and discovered soap making for the first time. I made your recipe and am waiting for the soap to cure (its been 4 weeks so should be ready soon) !I think it turned out GREAT and I am excited !!! Already going to make my second batch (different recipe) this weekend. I am addicted ! Only little complication i came upon when i made your recipe: making the lye water directly with the goats milk, I had to make it twice! The first time it got awfully dark and orange even though i used an ice bath. My goats milk was reconstituted from powder and i had the impression the powder separated from the mixture.. The second batch, did not get so hot and it only got slighlty darker but the powder still separated a bit. i decided to use it anyways since the color was okay. After doing some more research, I think next time i make soap with goat milk, I will add the milk powder directly to the oil mixture adding the lye water to it. I heard this is the most uncomplicated way to do it as you dont have to worry about scorching your milk! It still turned out great though !!!!!
thanks:)
Hi Andreane!
I’m glad you liked the soap.
Thanks for the tip! I wasn’t really sure how powdered goats milk would work in the recipe. My son’s eczema flares up whenever he drinks cows milk, and he loves milk, so I always have fresh goats milk on hand.
Other people were asking about it, though, so I’m glad you found a way to make it work. That does make sense, especially if the goats milk has fat in it that allows it to incorporate into the oils. I would think that adding it in at trace would also be a less complicated way of doing it.
Making soap is addicting, and I love it because people love getting it as gifts and they are so impressed when you say you made it yourself! 😉
I’ve been working a couple of Christmas soaps. There is one that I want to post soon, but I want to make a second batch to make sure I really like the recipe before I post it!
Thank you Tracy! I got it out of the molds and cut it this evening, and it turned out perfectly! I actually used a bar today, and I LOVE it! Thanks again for this recipe!
Thanks so much for this. I love it, and you’re recipe and pictures are amazing! I just made this (just sat down from doing so 5 minutes ago) my house smells wonderful! I a have made soap before, but still consider myself an amateur and still need practice. The soap is in the mold as we speak, but I have one concern, it is half the consistency as mayonnaise, I was wondering (am worried) will it harden and set up correctly that way? I do hope so, I have been so anxious to try this recipe and give it as gifts as well. Hope to hear from you soon. I will let you know how it turns out. Thanks, and God bless.
Hi Jessica,
Thank you so much for your comment! Yes, this soap does small wonderful!
I really think that you should be OK. Even if the consistency is thinner than mayonnaise, if it has the appearance of a thin mayonnaise, you probably just achieved a lighter “trace.” If your soap ingredients were cold when you mixed them together, like mine were, it does take longer to have the soap fully set.
I’d love to hear how it turns out.
What a great recipe. I made 2 batches. The first exactly as you have written and the second I omitted all the dried spices and added dehydrated beetroot (thinking it would go red, not so much – sadly) and added orange and peppermint EO’s. Seems to be a good base recipe that you can totally customize (I’m making all my Christmas gifts this year)
Thank you so much for this 🙂
Thanks for your comment, Ramona. I’m glad you like the recipe!
Yes, these soaps are very easy to customize. Now that you have tried making soap so it shouldn’t be as intimidating anymore, you can check out lye calculators online to tweak recipes or even make up your own.
I was actually going to try to use beetroot last year, too, to make a red soap for Christmas, but luckily I looked it up online and found that other people had commented that beetroot turned a brownish color in soap.
There are a lot of spices that you can use to add color, though. I want to try some of them out myself! Paprika makes a good reddish orange.
For a naturally colored red, I just ordered some red clay. I’ll be experimenting with it to post on the blog.
As for DIY Christmas gifts, I’m teaming up with some other bloggers to do a series on DIY Christmas gifts starting next week. I’d love it if you’d come back and check it out!
Absolutely. I love your blog and just so you know … your recipe is my go-to recipe. My lucky family and friends. Just so you know – they all LOVED their Christmas gifts and “ordered” more, lol.
Thank you so much, Ramona, for your comment!
You don’t know how much I appreciate comments like these. It’s what makes blogging worthwhile. 🙂
I’m so happy you liked it, and I hope that you had a wonderful Christmas!
Thank you for getting back with me, I went ahead and made a double batch but made 2 mistakes.My first one was I forgot to add the pumpkin puree, I immediately went to the lye calculator and found I was still good. My second mistake was using kosher salt, didnt quite dissolve and you can see white flakes (I am positive its not lye). My moral to this is dont make soap when there is a possible chance your door bell will ring. I also used walnut oil and grapeseed oil, plus small amount of olive oil. This is my second time making soap and the first by myself. Your directions were awesome and I thank you for this recipe! Even with out the pumpkin it smells amazing.
Thanks, Deanna, for letting me know how it turned out for you!
The salt, sugar, and pumpkin are really optional. The salt helps add hardness, and the sugar helps add lather. The pumpkin is supposed to be moisturizing, and helps add vitamins and the tiniest bit of color, but it isn’t necessary either. You are right about the soap working fine without it.
It’s mainly the spice oils that give the soap its scent.
I don’t mind soaps that aren’t completely uniform, and actually quite like them that way. It shows that they are handcrafted. I’m sure yours was beautiful even with the salt flecks.
Why does nobody ever call or ring the doorbell until you’re in the middle of something delicate!?!?!
It always seems to happen that way!
Where did you get the stamps for the words in your soap?
Hi Julie,
They are actually stamps for stamping fondant for cookies. I think it may be this exact set (affiliate link): http://amzn.to/1zfAMBS If you stamp them when the soap is still soft, you can use pretty much any type of stamp, though, even rubber type stamps can work if they aren’t too detailed.
I am just curious, instead of water, can I substitute coconut milk without changing anything else?
Sorry, Deanna! I saw this question when I was out of the house, and forgot to answer it when I got home!
Yes, you can certainly use coconut milk for part of the liquid in the soap! It should help make a nice lather.
You want to treat it more like a milk than like water, though, so it’s a good idea to either freeze it first or mix it with the lye in a container with ice so it doesn’t get too hot when it reacts with the lye. It will also likely turn a bit yellow just like my goat milk did.
I’d love to hear how it turns out if you try it!
I’m so excited to try this! If all works well, this will be “thankful for you” gifts in my office! Approximately how many typical sized bars of soap will this make? Thank you!
Hi Lauren,
I hope it works well for you…
I’m sorry that I forgot to go count my bars of soap the other day and get back to you!
I made 11 bars with the recipe, but I was experimenting so they are all different sizes. Most of them aren’t that big.
The one in the picture with the words on it is only about 3in. x 1.5in. x .75 in., and I made 7 of those.
The rectangular ones were twice that size 3in. x 1.5in. x 1.5in., and I made 2 of those.
I also made 2 larger soap bars. So, it really depends on the size soap you want to make. In the end, I think my favorite is the rectangular soap.
I cut off a lot of edges and things when squaring up my soap, and I added those scraps to water to make a sort of liquid soap for my kitchen. (Future post idea?) 🙂 So, I did get a little more soap out of it than that.
I forgot to mention it in the recipe, but if you want the main base soap to be orange, you can infuse some paprika in the olive oil, too. I may have to do that and take pictures for next year. I was trying to keep it as basic as possible, but I think that could really be fun! 🙂
Great! I will try and remember to come back and share. It’s for a make-n-take party, and would be too hard to do it without the pour&mold! 🙂 Thank you!
How would I adjust this recipe if I were to use a pour & mold soap base?
Thanks!
I’ve never used a pour and mold soap base, but I’m guessing it should be relatively easy to achieve similar results using one.
If I were going to try it, I would start at step 8, and add in the pumpkin and oils, and then separate the soap mixture into two halves, adding the spices to one half. I’d continue with the recipe from there.
I’m not sure how that sort of base would react with the liquid in the pumpkin puree. When I calculated my recipe for the soap, I used a liquid measurement that allowed for a bit of extra moisture from the pumpkin puree. I’ve never used a soap base, so it’s hard for me to know for sure what the pumpkin puree will do to it. I’m guessing it should be OK, but just want to reiterate that it is only a guess!
If you do try it, I’d love to hear how it works out. It may help out other readers.
Good luck!
just wondering if you need to warm the oils before combining with the lye mixture? If so what temp should they be? Nathan’s for this recipe. Can’t wait to try it.
Hello Carolyn!
There’s no need to warm the oils! I used room temperature oils, and my lye mixture was pretty cold when I started mixing everything together. Because the mixture was on the cooler side, it took a little longer than usual to get to “trace,” the stage you want to reach where the mixture thickens like mayonnaise. If you were to use warmer oils, you would probably get to trace really quickly, especially if you add in essential oils like clove oil, which is known to speed things up.
While it’s nice to not have to mix for very long, if you’re beginning with soap making, especially with a swirled soap that you want to play with for a little while before it sets up like this one, having a little extra working time isn’t a bad thing either.
I hope that helps.
Can I use evaporated goat milk for this recipe?
Hi Trish,
Yes, that should work fine. You can play with the ratio of water and goat milk, too. Just make sure that the total amount of liquid remains the same.
HI Trish,
Can I use almond milk, soy or rice milk?
Hi Elma,
I’ve never used them, but any of those should be fine in this recipe. Make sure to treat them as you would the goat milk, though, by freezing them ahead of time. I’ve read that rice milk especially tends to heat up and react very quickly, which tends to make people think it isn’t going to work in their soaps while they’re making them, but afterwards works out quite well. 😉