Cocoa Butter Recipe - Cocoa butter is not unlike shea butter in many ways. A yellow/white fatty solid it comes from cacao seeds and is used in many recipes for beauty products, tanning oils, chocolate and soap.
Just like shea butter, it can be used in recipes with other ingredients although can be used just as well by itself. Cocoa butter is naturally solid at room temperature but will melt on body contact. It was traditionally used to make moisturisers, lotions and balms more solid. It makes wonderful moisturiser, especially for dry skin or mature skin which will leave the skin feeling wonderfully silky and soft for hours after application.
The benefits of Cocoa Butter are :
Moisturises and protects
Helps minimise wrinkles around the eyes, mouth and neck area
Can help women avoid stretch marks in pregnancy
Can help acne scarring and other scarring
Vitamin E A good quality cocoa butter will be naturally rich in vitamin E which is one of the best antioxidants for fighting free radicals. It does so by neutralising the radicals that destroy the molecules that attack and damage the skin. It naturally helps protect the skin against damage from the sun, smoking and pollution.
Luscious Moisturizing Cream
You can heat cocoa butter and mix it with a carrier oil to make a luscious moisturizing cream. As a special treat you can use a food mixer to whisk it while it cools down and it will look and feel like a fluffly mousse, great for a gift.
Bath melts are a real favourite of mine because they leave your skin feeling so soft and moisturised.
Cocoa Butter Recipe
50g cocoa butter
25g part sweet almond oil
Essential oil of your choice
Food colouring or soap colouring of your choice. - optional
Melt the cocoa butter gently over a pan of boiling water or very slowly (a few seconds at a time) in the microwave. Add the sweet almond oil and mix together. Remove from heat and leave for a few minutes just enough to allow the mixture to cool down. This is when you can add an essential oil of your choice and colour if you wish.
Warning - Bath melts can make your bath very slippy so be careful when you are getting out.
Shea Butter Shea butter is easily absorbed and gentle enough to use on the most sensitive skin of small babies and the elderly and everyone in between.
Calories in Honey It’s not the fact that there are lots of calories, because at 15 calories per teaspoon of honey it’s not a lot. No, the problem lies in the fact we really enjoy that one teaspoon so much we want another and another!
Olive Oil This wonderful oil moisturises without leaving an oily feel to the skin, and there have been many reports that acne actually improves dramatically when olive oil is used regularly.