French Milled Soap as Gifts

Making soap from scratch is a fun but lengthy process. A quick alternative is to gather all of your hotel soaps, leftover soaps, and bars of inexpensive soap to make your own French-milled soap for holiday gifts. French milling is a process where you reheat soap to make it denser, which turns it into a higher-quality soap that will last longer. 

Here's how: 

1. Grate soap scraps into a stainless steel or enamel sauce pan. (Do not use aluminum.)
   
2. As you melt the soap slowly add a couple cups of water.
3. Cook while stirring until it develops the consistency of a thick cake batter.
4. Add in any of the following: finely-ground oatmeal, almonds, dried and ground lavender, calendula petals, rose petals, cinnamon, other spices, essential oil (but NOT perfume), or any other ingredient to make the soap special, or just leave plain.
   
5. Pour into non-metal molds. Candy molds work for this or just use anything that will give the shape you want.
   
6. Cut once cooled, if needed.

Congratulations! You now have french-milled soap.

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