Homemade Egg Soap How-To

Making your own egg soap is an unusual and creative way to utilize eggs from your farm, homestead, or a local source. I’ve been making soap for my family for over twelve years now and wondered if I could incorporate eggs into my soap. With a little research, I found that it’s possible!

Eggs have been known to help with skin tightening, shrinking pores, calming redness and breakouts. The eggs also help the soap to hold more structure and build a fluffy creamy quality to the soap. This recipe is an advanced cold-process soap recipe. If you are starting to make your own soap, many great starter recipes are available on the internet and in homesteading books. Be sure to get some experience with an easier soap-making recipe before jumping into this recipe.

To start, you’ll need safety gear since you will be working with lye. In its raw form, lye can cause burns to the skin and other injuries. You’ll want to have rubber or latex gloves and protective eye gear. 

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Tools Needed

• Scale
• Immersion blender or long-handled spoon or spatula
• Measuring cups or bowls to measure oils
• Plastic container for mixing lye
• Large bowl with ice to keep the lye mixture cool
• Container for mixing oils
• Mold to pour the soap into – this can be anything A Velveeta cheese box lined with freezer paper will work great for the amount of soap in this recipe
• Freezer paper to line mold

Ingredients

• Coconut Oil, 76 degree melt, 8 oz 
• Olive Oil 9.6 oz
• Shea Butter 2 oz 
• Soybean Oil 3 oz 
• Lard 5 oz
• 1 egg (mine was 1.70 oz)
• Milk 8.65 oz, frozen in cubes *see note
• Lye 3.85 oz 

*Note: Please be sure to run your recipe with any adjustments through a lye calculator. I use soapcalc.net to calculate the quantities needed for each item. When running this recipe through the calculator, it will show a higher amount of water/milk required. The egg volume will count towards the liquid amount needed. Weigh the egg, and subtract that weight from the liquid to get the required weight of milk needed.

First, put your gloves and protective gear on. Weigh all of your ingredients, including the egg. Crack your egg into a dish and weigh the egg. You’ll want to subtract the weight of the egg from the milk needed. You’ll also need to line your mold with freezer paper. Some molds may not require lining, but mine did.

Why Frozen Milk?

Place the frozen milk cubes into the plastic container and set the container in a large bowl with ice. Using frozen milk will help keep it from scorching when the lye is added. The lye should always be added on top of the milk, never the other way around. Add small amounts of the lye, stirring as it is added. The lye will begin to melt the cubes of milk. Continue adding the lye in small amounts until it is all incorporated.

Using the microwave or a stovetop burner on very low, melt the solid oils (coconut and lard). You don’t want to include the shea butter here because it can become gritty if overheated. 

Combine the olive oil and the soybean oil, and then add the egg. You’ll want to mix the egg in so it is well combined with the oils.

Trace The Mixtures

Now, you can combine the milk/lye mixture with the melted oils/egg mixture. I like to use a deep pot to mix in so there is no splash zone with the raw soap mixture. As you combine the two mixtures, use the immersion blender to help the blending process. You’ll also want to scrape down the sides of the container as you go. This recipe is somewhat slow to trace, and the immersion blender helps that a bit. Trace is the point at which the oil and lye mixture is no longer at risk of separation. This means the ingredients have been blended and thickened to create a stable emulsion. You could also incorporate coloring at this time; I chose not to. Once a medium trace is reached, you can add fragrance oil, if desired.

Continue blending until you are happy with the trace consistency, and pour the soap batter into your mold. Allow the soap to stay in the mold for at least 24 hours before removal and cutting. After cutting, cure for 6-8 weeks to allow the soap to harden fully.