That’s a great question, Luisa! Yes the milk must be frozen, it is not optional. Because lye heats up so quickly and to such a high temperature, it can easily scorch the milk. Even if the milk is cold from the fridge, the lye heats it enough to scorch making the milk curdle, turn brown, and smell icky. Freezing the milk prevents all this, and keeps the milk (and your soap) a nice creamy white. Freezing milk in ice cube trays rather than a larger container or bag is the easiest way to do so. The cubes are easy to measure, and stir the lye into, rather than a large chunk of frozen milk. Have fun making your milk soap!

Is it required for the milk to be frozen or is this optional? Thank you,

Great question! If you would like to make a palm-free soap, you can substitute with more coconut oil. So, the total oils in the recipe would be 13 oz olive and 19 oz coconut. But you must also up the lye to 4.8 oz to account for a change in saponification values.

You could absolutely make a milk soap with only tallow! Many soap makers swear by tallow soap, so if you have it available to you, go for it. The basic technique would stay the same. For an approximate 2 lb batch of soap you would use the same amount of frozen milk in the recipe, with 32 oz beef tallow and 4.2 oz lye (for a 7% approx superfat, or you can run it through a lye calculator to get the % you’d like.)

Happy soaping!

You absolutely can add essential oils at trace. For this recipe, you would add 1.6 oz essential oil by weight. Good options are lavender, eucalyptus, rosemary, folded orange. Whatever essential oil you choose, do make sure it is skin safe, and check the recommended usage rate as some oils (like clove, cassia, etc.) have a much lower usage rate than what is listed above.

I am wondering the same…and at what percentage/weight/measurment