Our First Attempt at Making Soap

We've wanted to make soap for the longest time.  One time I actually started making lye from firewood ashes and it was almost done, but the dog knocked over the lye and spilled it.  The soap-making project went on hold for several years.  However, we began accumulating everything you need over the years.  We had soap molds and lye.  We had plenty of tallow that we rendered when we butchered calves.  We had coconut oil and olive oil.  We have two goats in milk, so we have all the milk we need.  A couple of weeks ago, Tricia went to the store and bought measuring cups, spoons, and an immersion blender that will be dedicated to soap-making and we set this weekend to get things started.

First we froze the goat milk in ice cube trays.  For this recipe we'll use 4 ounces.

It is very important when handling lye that you use safety glasses and gloves.  She measured out 1/4 of a cup + 2 Tablespoons of lye.

Tricia poured the lye into 4 ounces of distilled water.

She stirred it up real good so that the lye crystals dissolve.  On the far left of this photograph, you'll see a quart-sized mason jar that contains the fat we're using to make the soap.  It is being warmed, so it is in a liquid state.  It is a total of 3 cups of fat (oil), which was 1 1/2 cups beef tallow (11 ounces), 3/4 cup coconut oil (5 1/2 ounces), and 3/4 cups olive oil (5 1/2 ounces). 

A chemical reaction occurs that is pretty intense.  The lye heats up the water.  It got above 200 degrees Fahrenheit for a bit.

When the temperature cooled to 90 degrees, we poured 4 ounces of the frozen goat milk into the lye/distilled water solution, bringing the total liquid to 8 ounces.  If you don't wait for it to cool, it will burn the milk and turn it brown.

Then, putting the immersion blender into the cooled lye solution jar, you slowly pour the warmed fat (oil) in while blending.

The consistency of the soap will be like that of pudding, where it holds its shape a bit.  We used a spatula to spoon it out into a soap mold that we coated with Vaseline petroleum jelly.

If we learned anything that we could do differently, next time we'll try adding a little bit more liquid as the soap was a little too thick (1/4 to 1/2 cups more liquid).

Using the spatula, we smoothed out the soap in the mold.  We'll show you in a minute why we want to add a little more liquid.

We covered with plastic wrap and you could feel the soap heat back up.  We let it sit for 48 hours.

After 48 hours, we removed from the mold.  You can see that the soap block has imperfections.  It is not pretty, but it will have to do for our first attempt.  We're thinking that if the soap used more liquid, it would flow better and fill in the voids.  Tricia marked off 1 inch increments in the 10 inch block of soap.

I first tried to cut it with dental floss, but quickly realized that it was easier and more precise to just use a knife.

At last we have 10 bars of homemade goat milk soap. 

We'll put these away for 4 to 6 weeks, turning them from time to time and allow them to cure.  Then we'll use our homemade bars of soap!  Now that we've proven to ourselves that we can do this, we're going to try to make a soap recipe using goat milk, oatmeal, honey and aloe.

A Delicious Option for Navel Oranges

Our Navel Orange tree is loaded down with fruit.  You can spot citrus trees all over the place around our area, whether they be oranges, tangerines, satsumas, etc.  I look around and I see so much fruit going to waste and I don't want to waste a single one of ours.  We'll eat them and juice them, but I was also looking for other ways to use the delicious fruit in new and inventive ways.

Our little navel orange tree loaded down

On the James Beard Foundation website, I found an interesting recipe from David Leite for Portuguese-Orange Olive Oil Cake.  The name captured my interest and I read a little more.  The author states:

 "When I lived in Lisbon, a few times a week, I'd trudge up the hill from my apartment and pop into Papas for breakfast, perhaps one of the tiniest restaurants in the city. It seats a mere eight people, and that includes two at the counter. If it wasn't open yet, for the Portuguese regard horários (schedules) as nothing more than polite suggestions, I'd wait. My go-to breakfast was this dessert cake. It's dense, moist, and deeply flavored, and, I'm not ashamed to say, the servers tended to have a generous hand when cutting slices."

This sounded like a great cake to try.  So we got started.  Here are the ingredients:

• Nonstick baking spray with flour
• 4 to 5 large navel oranges
• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 3/4 teaspoons kosher salt
• 5 large eggs
• 3 cups granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 cups mild extra virgin olive oil
• Confectioners’ sugar, for sprinkling

We quickly assembled the minimal ingredients that the recipe called for and got busy.  Benjamin's job was to grate the zest of 3 of the four oranges he picked off the tree.  He promptly cut his knuckles with the zester and I had to tell him that the recipe didn't call for BLOOD oranges.  A band aid fixed him up and he continued zesting.

Benjamin is Zesting!

Next, you want to squeeze out the juice from the oranges until you have 1 1/2 cups of juice.  We poured the juice through a strainer to remove the seeds.

Laura is Juicing!

Now 3 1/2 cups of flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder and 1 3/4 teaspoons salt was whisked together and set aside.  Then the 5 eggs were beat with a mixer until combined and then the 3 cups sugar was poured in while mixing.  Our hens are only laying a couple eggs a day, so that was a good-sized investment.  The cake better be good!

Mixing it up

Once blended, the flour mixture and 1 1/2 cups olive oil are added and mixed until incorporated. Finally, pour in the orange juice and zest and continue until all is blended in to a nice creamy consistency.

The power of flour

We buttered a bundt pan and poured the rich batter into it.  You can really smell the 'citrusy' scent of the navel oranges.  If you look closely, you can see the orange tint and the little pieces of zest in the batter.

The batter matters...

We then place the cake in an oven preheated to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and allow to bake for one hour and 15 minutes.  Once it is done we remove to a wire rack to cool.

One interesting thing that the recipe states is this:  "Since this cake only gets better with age, don’t even think about taking a bite until the day after you make it, or even the day after that."  It was hard to be patient and follow this advice, but we did!

The cake is done!

After 24 hours, we put a pot of coffee on and finally cut the cake.  It was heavy and moist - sort of like a pound cake.  The flavor was off the charts!

Portuguese Orange-Olive Oil Cake

We retired to 'the parlor' and enjoyed good cake, a good cup of coffee, and good conversation.  We spent a good hour or so just reminiscing about good memories that we have.  It was a delightful afternoon.

A few components of a good afternoon

I think when the Good Lord deemed the Sabbath to be a day of rest, that this is what that was supposed to look like:

Day of Rest

So to sum up, the Portuguese Orange-Olive Oil cake will be added to our rotation. It is simple, yet delicious and the family awarded it the coveted 10 thumbs up award!

Making Jalapeno Pepper Infused Olive Oil

The freeze hit the garden hard and the pepper plants were done.  I picked all of the peppers and sliced up everything but the jalapenos and put them in the freezer for cooking later.  I wanted to try something different with some of the jalapenos.

The last of the jalapenos for 2013

I decided to make Jalapeno infused olive oil.  I've heard that it is great for dipping bread in as a snack and great for drizzling over popcorn.  Interesting!  The first thing you do is get some nice, firm jalapenos.

Jalapenos

Slice up the peppers

Chopping them up

I then use a meat tenderizer to bruise up the chopped jalapenos in order to release more oils that reside in the peppers.

Bruising the peppers

Now we add enough olive oil in a small pot to cover the chopped peppers.

We heat the oil to 180 degrees.  I had a thermometer that I used to tell me when it was hot enough.  Once hot enough, I removed it from the burner and let the oil/pepper mixture cool.

Then we just bottle it, but we want to strain out the peppers and any pepper residue.  I place a coffee filter in a sieve and pour the oil into it.  The oil slowly drips through the filter.

Filtering out the peppers

From a bottom shot, you can see that the oil is clear so the filter is doing its job.  

After leaving the oil to drip overnight, we had a half pint jar of Jalapeno Infused Olive Oil.  I'll store it in the refrigerator until we are ready to try it.  I can't wait.

Jalapeno infused Olive Oil

This is the last of the jalapeno peppers until the Spring crop of 2014.