This is a new spin on a traditional oatmeal soap recipe. The addition of oat milk, ground oats and essential oils make this homemade soap extra soothing for sensitive skin.
Colloidal oatmeal or finely ground oats are one of my favorite natural ingredients. They're great at relieving dry skin and soothing itchiness. I use them for DIY oatmeal baths, breastmilk soap and oatmeal bath bombs.
This recipe requires the use of lye to make your own soap. If you'd rather make soap using a made-for-you melt and pour soap base, check out my goat milk melt and pour soap recipe.
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Skin Benefits of Oats
- contain lipids that nourish skin and replenish oils that have been lost from the skin
- suitable for all skin types
- have moisturizing properties
- contain avenanthramides: anti-oxidants solely found in oats
- anti-inflammatory
- well known for their ability to soothe itchy skin
- cleansing properties thanks to a small amount of saponins
- gently exfoliate and remove dead skin cells
- act as a natural humectant, meaning the attract moisture to the skin
Let’s take a closer look at how to prepare your ingredients for this soap.
What's oat milk?
Oat milk is simply rolled oats and water blended together.
How to make oat milk
- Place ¼ cup of old fashioned rolled oats in a high speed blender (a not so high speed blender works too;)
- Add a cup of water
- Blend on high for 20 - 30 seconds
- For this soap I didn’t strain the milk, but for food purposes strain the oat milk through a clean shirt and discard the pulp
Can I make lye solution with oat milk?
For this cold process soap recipe the oat milk is added to the oils to replace a part of the water content. Making the lye solution with oat milk doesn’t work. It will result in a stringy glue like mess. I suspect it’s due to the amount of starch that reacts badly with the lye.
Can I leave the oat milk out?
Yes, you can omit the oat milk. In that case, prepare your lye solution with 5oz (142g) of distilled water. After that don't add any more liquid to the soap.
How to make your own ground oats
- Place rolled oats in a coffee grind or food processor
- Pulse until you have a fine powder
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, you can read my full disclosure here.
If you've never made cold process soap before I recommend you read my posts on lye safety, soapmaking equipment and my homemade soap beginner guide before you start.
Equipment
- gloves, goggles, long sleeves
- 2 medium sized containers (plastic or stainless steal)
- small plastic cup to measure lye
- small glass container to measure essential oil blend
- immersion blender (stick blender)
- accurate digital kitchen scale
- single cavity silicone soap mold
- silicone spatula
- small spoon (optional, to texture top)
- blender to prepare oat milk
- coffee grinder or food processor (optional, if grinding your own oats)
- cutting board
Ingredients
This recipe makes for 6 regular sized soap bars (24oz/680g) and is superfatted at 7%.
- for making oat milk: ¼ cup old fashioned rolled oats + 1 cup distilled water
- distilled water: 2.56 oz / 73 g
- sodium hydroxide (lye): 2.46 oz / 70 g
- olive oil or sweet almond oil (48%): 8.9 oz / 252 g
- tallow (20%): 3.7 oz / 105 g
- coconut oil (15%): 2.78 oz / 79 g
- shea butter (10%): 1.85 oz / 53 g
- castor oil (7%): 1.3 oz / 37 g
- ground old-fashioned oats: 1 Tbsp
- lavender Essential Oil: 17 g
- geranium Essential Oil: 4 g
- dried lavender buds and rolled oats (optional): for decorating the top
How to make oatmeal soap
- Prepare Oat Milk: place ¼ cup of oats in blender, top off with 1 cup of water and blend on high speed for 20 -30 seconds
- Prepare ground oats: grind 2 tablespoon in a food processor/coffee grinder to fine powder
- Safety First: Put on your googles and gloves and make sure you're not soaping around children and/or pets. Keep your space ventilated or soap outdoors
- Mix Lye Solution: Slowly and carefully add the lye to water, gently stirring until fully dissolved, set aside
- Melt coconut oil, tallow and shea butter over low heat in a water bath
- Add olive oil and castor oil to melted oil
- Add essential oils
- Add 2.43 oz (68g) of oat milk
- Add ground oats and stir
- When lye solution and oils are about room temperature combine the two and stick blend until medium trace (thin pudding consistency) is achieved
- Place soap mold on a cutting board
- Pour soap batter into mold and tap it down a couple of times to release any air bubbles
- Mount the soap on top of each bar and texture using back of a small spoon
- If you wish to decorate the top with lavender twigs, buds or oat flakes, make sure that the soap is at VERY thick consistency at that point. This will prevent them from turning brown on top of your soap.
- Place mold in freezer overnight
- Unmold after 48 hours and cure 4-5 weeks
- Enjoy!
Oatmeal Soap Recipe
A soothing bar of oatmeal soap enhanced with oat milk, ground oats and essential oils.
Ingredients
- for making oat milk: ¼ cup old fashioned rolled oats + 1 cup distilled water
- distilled water: 2.56 oz / 73 g
- sodium hydroxide (lye): 2.46 oz / 70 g
- olive oil or sweet almond oil (48%): 8.9 oz / 252 g
- tallow (20%): 3.7 oz / 105 g
- coconut oil (15%): 2.78 oz / 79 g
- shea butter (10%): 1.85 oz / 53 g
- castor oil (7%): 1.3 oz / 37 g
- ground old-fashioned oats: 1 Tbsp
- lavender essential oil: 17 g
- geranium essential oil: 4 g
- dried lavender buds and rolled oats (optional): for decorating the top
Instructions
Equipment
- gloves, goggles, long sleeves
- 2 medium sized containers (plastic or stainless steal)
- small plastic cup to measure lye
- small glass container to measure essential oil blend
- immersion blender (stick blender)
- accurate digital kitchen scale
- single cavity silicone soap mold
- silicone spatula
- small spoon (optional, to texture top)
- blender to prepare oat milk
- coffee grinder or food processor (optional, if grinding your own oats)
- cutting board
Instructions
- Prepare Oat Milk: place ¼ cup of oats in blender, top off with 1 cup of water and blend on high speed for 20 -30 seconds
- Prepare ground oats: grind 2 tablespoon in a food processor/coffee grinder to fine powder
- Safety First: Put on your googles and gloves and make sure you're not soaping around children and/or pets. Keep your space ventilated or soap outdoors
- Mix Lye Solution: Slowly and carefully add the lye to water, gently stirring until fully dissolved, set aside
- Melt coconut oil, tallow and shea butter over low heat in a water bath
- Add olive oil and castor oil to melted oil
- Add essential oils
- Add 2.43 oz (68g) of oat milk
- Add ground oats and stir
- When lye solution and oils are about room temperature combine the two and stick blend until medium trace (thin pudding consistency) is achieved
- Place soap mold on a cutting board
- Pour soap batter into mold and tap it down a couple of times to release any air bubbles
- Mount the soap on top of each bar and texture using back of a small spoon
- If you wish to decorate the top with lavender twigs, buds or oat flakes, make sure that the soap is at VERY thick consistency at that point. This will prevent them from turning brown on top of your soap.
- Place mold in freezer overnight
- Unmold after 48 hours and cure 4-5 weeks
Notes
- you can replace homemade oat milk with store bought
- you can omit the oat milk. In that case, prepare your lye solution with 5oz (142g) of distilled water. After that don't add any more liquid to the soap.
Rebecca
Great recipe. I can't wait to try it out.
Celine
Thank you, Rebecca!
Karen
Ok want to try but confused about the step with the oatmeal milk does it get strained? Because you mention something about it getting gooy
Celine
Hi Karen, I didn’t strain mine but you can. Don’t add the oat milk straight to your lye when making your solution use water for that. Add it to the oils. Happy Tinkering:)
Karen
Thanks
Karen
Hi me again ok now understand the oatmilk part but when I ran through soapcalc the water amt is 199.88 and yours adds up to 141. Just checking to see why such a difference. And cleansing is,a low number does it cleanse well. Sorry for all thexques tins I am fairly new to cp soaping
Celine
Hi Karen, No Problem ;)In SoapCalc in the top row under Nr.3 Water you probably have it set to "Water as % of oils" which is the default setting. What you want to do is select "Lye Concentration" mine was set to 33%. This setting in my opinion is more accurate. There's a great article about that by Kenna .
The reason why the cleansing number is low is that the amount of coconut oil in this recipe isn't too high in order to create a more gentle soap. Coconut oil which contains mostly lauric and myristic fatty acids will bubble up quickly, rinse off fast and leave your skin "squeaky" clean. That's what SoapCalc sees as cleansing. In the end all soap is cleansing. Take Castille soap, for example, made of 100% olive oil and gets 0 for cleansing on soapcalc, but everyone will agree that it'll get you clean. So, take the numbers on soapcalc with a grain of salt 😉 Hope this helps. Let me know if you have more questions.
Karen
Thanks going to give it a try
Eva
Hey Celine! I just tried this recipe and it smells so divine with the oatmilk. Only thing is I got a pool of oil on top when I checked it about 4 hours later.
I noticed some separation starting when I poured the trace into my silicone mould.
Then, I also did top my soap with the lavender buds that had been soaked in oil (a mistake in hindsight)
Do you think it could have been the buds or perhaps the soap overheated? I followed your recipe to a tee and ran it through the bramble berry soap calc.
Sorry to ramble and ask so many questions, do you think the best solution is to rebatch??
Kindest!
Eva 🙂
Celine
Hi Eva, it’s tough to say what went on without being there. You might have encountered false trace which sometimes happens when you combine the lye solution and oils at low temperatures. It looks like trace at first but separates in the mold? How is the soap looking after a few days? Sometimes extra oil gets reabsorbed into the soap.
Celine
If you wish to rebatch I would remove the excess oil, cut the soap into small pieces and use as embeds in a new batch.
Isa
Hi! Lovely recipe! Just wondering what could be used to replace the tallow!
All the best 🙂
Celine
You could use palm oil (if you want to avoid animal products) or lard. But you will have to run the recipe through a lye calculator since the amount of lye to use will change.
Taylor
Hi Celine!
I'm super new to soap making (trying my hand at homemade Holiday presents this year!) and have a quick troubleshooting question.
I tried both this recipe and your Vetiver & Charcoal soap recipe, and am having so much fun, thank you! The Vetiver soap looks like it came out great and is currently curing. However, I'm afraid I had a false trace when making this oat milk soap as I may have let my lye solution drop too low in temperature. I added alkanet powder to color it lavender after trace, so even though it got very thick very quickly, I did end up continuing to stick blend for a bit longer to fully mix in the color, but the texture definitely wasn't the "smooth pudding like" consistency of the other soap recipes I've tried. I hadn't read about false tracing before trying the recipe and didn't know to keep blending to ensure the oils and lye do actually bind like they're supposed to, so I tried to transfer it to my molds as quickly as possible after getting the color blended through, and they are currently sitting in the freezer from last night.
I'm wondering how I can tell if my soap was actually able to saponify enough to work and be safe to use, or if I'll have to scratch it? If it comes out of the molds okay today, should I continue to cure it and pH test it in a few weeks, or is there a test of some sort I can do now to determine if I should rebatch it or keep curing it? Is it just a lost cause and needs to be redone?
Thank you!!
Celine
Hi Taylor, in case of false trace, the oils will eventually separate again and usually pool in their liquid form on top of the soap. If your soap remains solid and you don’t see any other irregularities like lye crystals your soap is safe to use. Thick trace happens sometimes quite fast especially with a high water discount, but that’s ok. Happy soaping 🙂
Rita Koontz
Thank you for the recipe - it looks wonderful. I’m a little nervous about the step where we combine the oils and lye water when both are about room temperature. I’ve never seen a recipe with such a low temp. Can you help me understand what that’s all about?
Celine
Hi Rita, over the years I found that it was much easier to let the lye and oils cool down to room temp. Instead of trying to have them be at roughly the same temp at 110 or so degrees. I just found that was a lot of juggling. I never had a bad experience with room temp, but you can certainly do whatever method you’re used to.
Revathy
Hey, if I am switching tallow with palm oil, you asked to calculate the amount of lye through a lye calculator. So I be mentioning the quantity of essential oils and the oat milk? Or should I just mention the carrier oils' quantity?
Please help
Celine
Hi, you would only put in the carrier oils. The amount of lye needed will likely change if your switching out an oil. Let me know if you have any questions!
Revathy
My soap turned out to be mushy. I did run my recipe through a lye calculator, but for some reason soap turned too soft and wouldn't come out of the mould. Please help and tell me what can be done if I re-do the recipe
Celine
Hi Revathy, how long did you leave your soap in the mold? Sometimes it can take up to a week for it to harden...
Rashmi Chakraborty
Hello, thanks for the recipe. In new at soapmaking with experience of only a couple of batches. I did CPOP the previous batches . In this recipe you mentioned to put it in the freezer (may be to avoid overheating). I'm gonna make it in individual moulds, do I still need to put it in freezer? What will happen if I leave it in room temperature? Thanks in advance.
Celine
It’s ok to leave it out since you’re using individual molds. The soap might go through gel and look a little darker, but that’s fine.
elizabeth Perez
HI, What can i replace the Tallow with, i prefer to not use it and keep the recipe fully plant base?
I read so many of your recipes and can't wait to try some of them.
Celine
You could try palm oil (sustainably sourced). Glad you enjoy the recipes!
Anna
Hi Celine
I would like to try this recipe but unfortunately I’m allergic to coconut oil. What other oil could I use and how mich of it?
Anna x
Celine
Hi Anna,
you could replace it with babassu oil the same amount as coconut oil. The amount of lye will only slightly differ, so that it doesn't warrant changing.
Lynda
Hi Celine,
I make a very plain soap using reclaimed bacon fat because I am allergic to so many things. My recipe is 710g cleaned fat, 170g distilled water, and 90g sodium hydroxide crystals (lye). I usually make it a little bit super fatted by only using 85g lye. I combine the lye water with the fat at 110 degrees and it very stable and predictable with this method. Before I got the ratios and temperature right I had a lot of seizing problems. Bacon fat is not in any of the soap calculators and is almost runny when compared to lard or tallow. I would like to add some oats and oat milk to make my soap a bit more soothing. Right now it is fantastic at removing stains and make up, but even super fatted it can be drying with hourly use such as when I am cooking. Do you have some ratio recommendations, and should I add some more soothing oils/fats? I'm not interested in essential oils as I often react to them.
Celine
Hi Lynda, The best way in my experience to make a soap more moisturizing to replace some of the fat with oils that are high in oleic fatty acids, like olive oil. You want to have a balanced soap recipe that doesn't only consist of one oil/fat. Make sure you run your new formula through a lye calculator. You can try adding ground oatmeal as well. hope that helps!