Homemade Body Butter

Last night was glorious! And no, I was not out doing wild and crazy things with the rest of the single twenty-somethings in this city. I was home with a friend making my own body butter. I have mentioned this before, but I get really unusual levels of enjoyment over making things for myself and for the last several years, I have had strange, secret desires to make my own soap and lotion. In addition, I enjoy using products that are simple and natural and non-chemical when possible (with the exception of fabric softener - I just can NOT give up the beloved smell of Downy, no matter how toxic it might be!).

So a couple of weeks ago, Joni (who is also the one who introduced me to Port and Dark Chocolate, bless her!) sent me an email link to some simple instructions for making your own body butter cream and body butter bars. I got super excited and did a little research. A company called Brambleberry.com sold my supplies for relatively inexpensive so I ordered them, they arrived last week, and Joni and I parked ourselves in my kitchen last night to see if we could whip up a little magic. We ended up making body butter cream, body butter bars and lip butter/gloss. I will give you the instructions for just the cream in this post and will do the other recipes another day...

Supplies:
a food scale
a glass bowl
hand mixer with a whisk attachment
some kind of container for your cream - I used a glass canning jar and the recipe filled up 1 quart sized jar to the top
3 oz pure cocoa butter
6 oz pure shea butter
3 oz any liquid oil (I used almond oil, but you could use jojoba or probably even good olive oil)

- Weigh out the two butters, cut them into relatively uniform-sized pieces and melt them together in the glass bowl in the microwave, stirring occasionally. I did not write down the exact amount of time this took, but I am guessing it was close to 5-7 minutes.
- Once the mixture is entirely liquid, give it a quick whisk and then place it either in the freezer or in another larger bowl filled with ice water.
- If you wanted to add a fragrance or essential oil of some kind, you could do it here. However, the cocoa butter smells just like chocolate and I loved that, so I left it alone.
-Let the bowl sit for 5 minutes. Whisk for about a minute. Let it sit for another 5 minutes. Whisk again, etc. As the mixture cools, you will need to scrape down the side of the bowl before whisking.













Do not let the mixture cool too much before pouring it into your jars. I would recommend pouring when it is the consistency of thick cake batter. Joni and I learned this the hard way (or the amusing way, depending on which way you look at it). I was distracted by how pretty it looked while I was mixing and then suddenly it got really firm! This lead to an interesting process of us trying to use our hands to press it down into our jars. We got it everywhere and our hands were covered. What's the problem, you ask? Well, this is pretty rich stuff and a little goes a long way. We called my roommate down from upstairs for aid! She rolled up our pant legs and we tried to rub the excess into our legs. When there was still more that needed to be rubbed in somewhere, well... Lets just say my feet weren't the only thing that were bare in the kitchen last night!

One disclaimer: If you try this, do not expect the consistency of a body butter that you would buy at the store. This stuff does not have any preservatives and it does not contain an emulsifier (which would keep it creamy). Once it cools, it has the consistency of... Hmmm... What to compare it to??? Well, it is firm, but turns to liquid as soon as you rub your hands together. It goes on oily, and it does take a little bit to soak in. However, I woke up this morning with softer skin than I have had in a very long time. That said, this is probably more of a night cream than a day cream.

And that is the end of my Friday night story. The bars and the lip butter also turned out really well! More on those soon :)