| Jessica emailed in the other day asking about making a vegetarian milk soap. I decided to make one with almond milk. I made my own almond milk 1) because it is less expensive and 2) I don’t have to run to the store when I am in the middle of all of my projects. It is easier to have a machine work than to drop everything to run to the store. Want to know how I make almond milk? I used a SoyaPower Plus machine to make almond milk from almonds I had soaked for about 31/2 hours. You can see how Andee did this with soy beans. Same concept, just different types of milk. Let’s head to the kitchen and see how to approach a vegetarian milk soap!
Jessica has Olive Oil, Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Coconut Oil, Palm Kernel Oil, and Avocado Oil in her cupboard. I think we can make a soap, don’t you? đ Jessica also didn’t want any fragrance added to her soap as her honey doesn’t like scent. We will be keeping this formulation simple, but if you want to have a fragrance oil added to yours, you are more than welcome to add one to your formulation. Collect Needed Items:
Recipe:
Weigh all of the oils into a microwave safe container. Heat gently until liquid. Add the lye to the water to for a lye solution. Allow the oils and the lye to cool to a lower temperature. We do not want to have the soap overheat and volcano. Mix the oils and lye solution and blend until a light trace is achieved. Add the almond milk and mix well. Pour into a mold and allow to sit for 24 hours. Cut the soap. Allow the soap to cure. Longer curing time will result in a harder bar. Enjoy!
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 Finished Soap  Placing soaked almonds into soymilk maker  Setting the soymilk maker for making almond milk  Straining the almond meal from the almond milk  Almond meal and almond milk seperated  Weighing Oils  Melted Oils  Adding lye solution to oils  Adding almond milk to soap at a light trace  Soap just after being poured into the mold  Soap 24 hours after being poured |
This post has made me intrigued about getting a soy/almond/etc milk maker. What do you do with the Almond meal after you have made your almond milk? Also roughly how many pounds of almonds did it take to make the 12 ounces of almond milk?
Thanks!
It took about 8 oz of dry almonds. I soaked those then made the milk from there.
With the left over okara, you can make facemasks, okara burgers, bread, cookies, pancakes, non-chicken chicken tenders and even okara curry! While many of these recipes call for soy okara, you could use the almond meal instead.
Here are some great recipe sites.
http://ellenskitchen.com/clearlight/okara/okara.html
http://www.soymilkmaker.com/tofurecipe.htm
http://www.soymilkmaker.com/recipe.html
I hope this helps!
Couldn’t you just mix the lye into the almond milk, like some do with milk and goat’s milk? It could be frozen slushy to avoid the dark coloring…although I like the brown color when I make oatmeal, milk and honey soap. It smells like oatmeal cookies, and the color continues the effect.
We don’t like to use full milk for our liquid because of the number of sugars. Milk soaps are heat sensitive and the sugar just increases the heat sensitivity. We also don’t recommend that you freeze the milk and then add the lye. The freezing of the milk can cause your soap to stall. This can cause other problems like dreaded orange spots. We want your success rate to be as close to perfect as possible. Now we realize 100% perfection isn’t possible but we want it to work 99% of the time. This means less work and stress for you.
If you are concerned about the color, you can add some Titanium Dioxide.
Oh, and you don’t really need a special machine to make the milk, a blender will do, the Mexicans make Horchata (rice milk, usually sweetened and spiced with cinnamon) in their blenders…first soaking the rice overnight…