A new spin on the traditional lavender soap recipe with the addition of oat milk and a dash of geranium essential oil. So soothing!
In the wintertime I find myself gravitating to everything that helps relieve dry skin (or at least doesn’t make it worse!) and soothes itchiness. My go to remedies are frequent milk baths and the use of body butter and gentle face masks. And, of course, soap that’s gentle and supercharged with skin loving ingredients. Hence this recipe.
Let’s take a closer look at how to prepare your ingredients for this soap.
What is oat milk?
Oat milk is simply rolled oats and water blended together.
How to Make Homemade Oat Milk
- Place 1/4 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 replace the entire water amount 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.
Skin Benefits of Oats
- They contain lipids that nourish skin and replenish oils that have been lost from the skin
- They have moisturizing properties
- They contain avenanthramides which are anti-oxidants solely found in oats
- They’re anti-inflammatory
- They are well known for their ability to soothe itchy skin
- They have cleansing properties thanks to a small amount of saponins
How to Make a Lavender Oil Infusion
There are two ways to infuse dry herbs or flowers into oil: Cold or heat infusion. Both methods start with combining plant material with oil in an airtight container (preferably made out of glass).
So, for this recipe you would take 3/4 cup of lavender buds, place them on the bottom of a mason jar, add 8.9 oz. (252 g) of olive oil, close the lid tight and give it a good shake.
Now, depending on how much time and patience you have, you can either:
a) place the mason jar on a sunny window sill for 3-4 weeks, or
b) fill a saucepan with a couple of inches of water, stand your mason jar in it, put it on a very low simmer for 2-3 hours. For this method you will have to check on your oil frequently and make sure the water hasn’t evaporated.
After the lavender is done infusing the oil, it’s time to strain the lavender buds. I used a colander that I lined with a coffee filter, but you can use a cheese cloth or very fine sifter instead.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost to you will I earn a commission if you decide to click through and make a purchase.
If you’ve never made cold process soap before I recommend you read my posts on lye safety, equipment needed and my beginner’s tutorial first.
What you’ll need:
- Gloves and goggles
- 2 Medium sized containers (not glass)
- Immersion blender
- Accurate digital kitchen scale
- Single cavity soap mold
- Spatula
- Small spoon (to texture top)
Ingredients (for 6 regular sized soap bars, 24 oz / 680g of soap):
This recipe is superfatted at 7%
- Distilled Water: 2.56 oz / 73 g
- Lye: 2.46 oz / 70 g
- Lavender Infused Olive 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
- Dried Lavender Buds: 1/4 cup
- Lavender Essential Oil: 17 g
- Geranium Essential Oil: 4 g
For the Oat Milk:
- Rolled Oats: 1/4 cup
- Distilled Water: 1 cup
Instructions:
- Prepare the Lavender Infused Olive Oil by following the steps outlined in the above text
- Prepare Oat Milk: place 1/4 cup of oats on the bottom of your blender, top off with 1 cup of water and blend on high speed for 20 -30 seconds
- 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 castor and infused olive oil (make sure you have the right amount of olive oil after straining the lavender)
- Add essential oils
- Add 2.43 oz (68g) of oat milk
- 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. For me that was 10 minutes after I poured the soap. 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!
Looking for more natural soap recipes? Why not try:
Until next time. Happy Tinkering!
Great recipe. I can’t wait to try it out.
Thank you, Rebecca!
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
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:)
Thanks
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
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.
Thanks going to give it a try
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 🙂
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.
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.
Hi! Lovely recipe! Just wondering what could be used to replace the tallow!
All the best 🙂
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.
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!!
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 🙂
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?
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.
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
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!
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
Hi Revathy, how long did you leave your soap in the mold? Sometimes it can take up to a week for it to harden…
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.
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.