Body butter too hard

[bassgirl]

Hi all,

I've tried three small batches of body butter and I can't seem to get the right consistency. Here's my last recipe:

1.2 oz. cocoa butter
.3 oz. shea butter
.3 oz. beeswax
.3 oz. mango butter
.3 oz. coconut oil
.8 oz. jojoba oil
.8 oz. avocado oil
plus vitamin E and EO's

It's 60% butters and 40% oils. I melted the butters, mixed in the oils, froze it for 5 minutes and then whipped it on high in the Kitchen Aid for 20 minutes. It was sort of creamy when I poured it into the jar, but by the next day, it's almost as hard as lip balm! Any idea how I can get it to be really creamy?

Many thanks!

 

[soap_lady]

You might want to try more liquid oils and less solid oils (butters) and getting rid of the beeswax.....


Cocoa butter is also a VERY hard butter so that's going to impact your final product as well, so it's going to be thicker and harder than if you used shea butter as your greatest amount ingredient. (does that make sense)

 

[Tabitha]

It looks like a solid lotion bar recipe to me, not so much a whipped butter.

I would skip the beeswax, up the shea (soft butter) to 1.2 and reduce the cocoa (hard butter) to .3.

Whipping butter is an art of it's own. You may whip 20 batches before you get a good feel for it. I am sure you have seen all the threads w/ people cussing about whipping butter :wink: .

You can melt your batch back down & add more oils & whip it again so it's not a loss.

 

[bassgirl]

Thanks to both of you for the tips! I was afraid to use too much shea because I read that it's very greasy. I've been adding about 1 tsp. of corn starch to the above recipe but I'm not sure if it's helping or how much I can add. I guess I would need even more corn starch if I use more shea? Any rules of thumb on how much is OK?

It's also nice to know that I can redo the batch, although it's still quite usable in its harder state. Maybe I should start a line of solid lotion bars too!

 

[Becky]

Bassgirl, I find that if I melt my shea, I get a really brittle whipped butter. However, if I just toss it into the mixer with the liquid oils & let it do its thing, I get a nice firm but soft whipped butter. The most I would heat my shea is to just soften it a little, so that it mixes with the liquid oils better. Melting = bad for me!

 

[bassgirl]

I tried Tabitha's suggestion above, switching the shea and cocoa butter. I didn't melt any of it, just threw it in and started whipping. I think the shea was fine, but there are still chunks of hard cocoa butter in it. Otherwise, it whipped up really nicely! So next time I guess I'll just melt the cocoa butter only first.

 

[digit]

You can melt your batch back down & add more oils & whip it again so it's not a loss.

The true beauty of playing with butters. Don't you wish you could do this with more products?

I have some kokum butter to work with. I am thinking of subbing the cocoa butter. They both have the same hardness rating, but kokum is reported to be more absorptive in the skin. Also because I have yet to master the art of tempering cocoa butter. I also have set my eyeballs on kpangnan butter.

Heck, I am still in the "have to try everything" phase.

Digit

 

[bassgirl]

Heck, I am still in the "have to try everything" phase.

Digit

Oh, I'll probably be in that phase for a long while!

So a couple of days later, the batch I made now seems like it's trying to separate, or at least the air bubbles in it are popping. I don't know if it's because the cocoa butter didn't all blend in or what. I was going to remake it and melt just the cocoa butter, so hopefully that will make it more stable. :?

 

[Tabitha]

I emlt everything w/o a problem. The idea of not melting your shea butter is a fairly new itrend, melting it is *old school* I guess . You really do need to melt the cocoa, but it sounds like you figured that one out :wink: .

 

[bassgirl]

Well, I melted the CB and I think that was good. But discovered I also need to melt the mango butter too.

Oh well, batch #6 will be the charm, right? :?