A whole lot of butter

You may recall my blog about making body scrubs as Christmas gifts last year. If not you can read it here. My friend, we’ll call her Bee, was so impressed with my creativity and the quality of the scrub I gave her, she asked if I knew anything about using cocoa butter. She had a block of it and wasn’t sure what to do with it. I didn’t have any experience myself but knew a number of lotions used cocoa butter so I told her I’d look for some recipes.

 
I found a couple and shared them with her during my next visit. She offered to give me the butter to see what I could do with it, and I accepted the challenge. Unfortunately, several factors prevented me from doing so right away and I gave it back to her a few weeks later.

 

Fast forward a couple of months, Bee told me she found a simple recipe that worked for her and asked if I wanted to give it a shot also. I admit to being torn. I did want to find a way to make a nice lotion and cocoa butter has some wonderful benefits, but I was a bit intimidated by the amount being offered. Did I mention this was a ten-pound block of butter and she was offering me half? After taking a deep breath and accepting, she promised to deliver it later that day.

 

Those five pounds of cocoa butter sat on my counter for five months. It smelled so chocolatey I’m not sure how I didn’t gain weight from just inhaling it. Christmas was rapidly approaching  and I was determined to gift at least one batch of body lotion from this block of butter.

 

I picked up a tub of body lotion base from Hobby Lobby. I was under the silly impression there would be instructions or recipes under the label or on the manufacturer’s website. Sadly I was mistaken so I’ve had to figure this out on my own.

 

I did find some recipes on Pinterest, but the first attempt I made with just the butter, coconut oil, and essential oil came out rather greasy. I decided to add some of the lotion base to see if that would help with the grease factor. It did, but now the mixture is a bit firmer than I would like. I kept the first batch for myself and the second I gave to my mom. A third batch turned out a bit better and I gave that to Bee for Christmas.

 

Peppermint Body Butter

 
I’m glad I went baking crazy so I had something homemade to distribute at work. Maybe by next year I will have mastered lotion making. If you have any tips to help me out, please share them in the comments. I really want to be his cool, crafty person, but I don’t know if I possess that gene.

 
 

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