So I've had my milker for a week & am already overflowing w/ milk! I'm freezing it for future useage, since it appears most of my friends & family are all a bunch of unadventurous wimps & won't try it! That's okay - more for us!

Anyway, so I'm looking for instructions & recipes to make goats' milk products . . .butter, yogurt, ice cream, soap, etc.

2 questions off the top of my head are: how do you separate the cream? It doesn't appear to be like cows' milk where it rises to the top - IS it? If it is, can't I just use a fat separator? Also, isn't there a way to make butter in the blender? I could have sworn I read this somewhere, once upon a time, but now that I want to DO it, you KNOW I can't find any info on it!

& soap! I haven't been able to master the soap yet. Anyone here make goats' milk soap? I need a surefire recipe w/ minimal ingredients. I've made 2 batches of laundry detergent so far & am feeling like a big stooge since making soap is supposed to be "so easy". Yeah, RIGHT. Not in this household.

Thanks in advance! Sarah/MI

-- Sarah/MI (colonel@frontiernet.net), April 07, 2001

Answers

caprinesupply.com and Hoeggers 770-461-5398 Both have great catalogs, with tons of information, equipment and books in them. Mary Jane Toth books are great. Meat recipes, milk recipes and soap, all in one. The library also carries the older books Cheesemaking made easy or something like that. This is where a goat club is great, their are always gals doing it all, making cheese, soap, sausage etc. When you join ADGA they will give you a directory and in the back you can find a local club. Or we can help you find one. Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), April 07, 2001.

Hello Sarah, My source that has worked great is countryside mag.!!!! The volume with Mary Jane Toth's articles has more stains on it from being in the kitchen than alot of my cookbook's!!!! It's vol.83 No.3. Also I've used a soap recipe from an old mag. too. It was a letter in the beginning of the mag. but it might be in the arcives. It used half milk and half water. I added oatmeal to the mix and it made a nice goat milk soap. I never got enough cream to make butter, so I bought a cream seperator. It still doesn't give me enough cream to make butter and leave it up all the time so I boxed it for when I get more goats and a bigger Kitchen :-) Hope this helps.

-- Patti in NJ (pioneerpatti@msn.com), April 08, 2001.