Silky Smooth DIY Body Butter Recipe
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A simple body butter recipe using all-natural ingredients and a simple melting and whipping technique. The end product is rich and creamy and feels like whipped butter as you scoop it up. It melts on contact with your skin, leaving it silky-smooth and sweetly scented with a citrusy essential oil blend. Includes a DIY video.
Body butter is an anhydrous (water-free) skincare product that we use to smooth, soften, and condition our skin. It’s similar in ingredients to a body balm recipe but different. One difference is that we usually add an ingredient to make it feel lighter and less oily on our skin. We also whip the ingredients as they cool so that the end product feels like fluffy whipped butter. That makes it a joy to scoop up and massage into our skin! Especially when it feels dry and a bit lackluster.
That’s how my skin tends to feel during autumn and winter, and this year is no different. That’s why I’ve just whipped up a new batch of homemade body butter and am thrilled with its creamy feeling and citrusy scent. Body butter is incredibly easy to make and would help so many at this time of the year. That’s why I’d like to share my recipe with you and take you through making it step by step. In the end, you’ll have a couple of jars worth to enjoy yourself or to give to loved ones. With the holidays coming up, it would make an excellent handmade gift!
Homemade Whipped Body Butter
Many people are familiar with body butter as the Body Shop product. That product range is lovely to use but a bit different from what I will show you how to make. Instead of using synthetic ingredients like Dimethicone (a type of microplastic), I will show you how to make body butter using natural ingredients. Shea butter, coconut oil, cocoa butter, and sweet almond oil for starters. It also includes cornstarch, which helps stop the product from feeling too oily on your skin. Another important ingredient is a natural thickener called cetyl alcohol.
Cetyl alcohol is a natural fatty alcohol that can be made from plant or animal sources. So if you’re vegan, you need to research the product that you end up using. What it does in this recipe is firm up the body butter without creating drag, as beeswax can do. It also makes the body butter feel even more silky. Cetyl alcohol is a common and very safe skincare ingredient, and you may need to order it from a skincare ingredients supplier. You can also order small quantities of vegan cetyl alcohol on Amazon.
Oils & Butters
The bulk of the ingredients we’ll use are solid and liquid oils. The ratio of the oils in this recipe is there to help stop the body butter from melting in warm rooms and to feel light and airy when you’re using the product. The main oil we’re using is shea butter, a thick and conditioning solid oil that holds the body butter up and nourishes your skin like nothing else. Cocoa butter gives firmness and even more conditioning, while coconut oil absorbs quickly into your skin. Too much coconut oil in body butter can lead to them melting too quickly in the container, so there’s just a touch in this recipe.
Citrusy Fragrance
The other ingredients included are a citrusy essential oil blend of bergamot, orange, and lavender. You don’t have to add them if you don’t wish, but the scent is gorgeous and really uplifting on a gray winter’s day. Another ingredient, vitamin E, is also optional, but it’s there to help keep the oils in the recipe from going rancid too quickly. It’s not a preservative but rather an antioxidant. The best way to have the longest shelf life possible is to use ingredients that have a long shelf life and to keep the body butter stored in a cool place out of direct sunlight.
Whipped Body Butter Recipe
Before I take you through making homemade whipped body butter step by step, let me run you through the basic premise. The point of all the steps is to melt the solid ingredients gently so that you can blend them with ingredients that are liquid (or powder) at room temperature. Then, as the mix begins to cool, you whip it so tiny air bubbles are trapped in the oils.
It’s mainly these air bubbles that will make the body butter feel light and fluffy. The other ingredients add creaminess, silkiness, and homemade skin pampering like you’ve never had. If you’d like to make even more luxurious handmade skincare, here are some other recipes that will be up your street:
Silky Smooth DIY Body Butter Recipe
Equipment
- stand mixer (or whisk)
- 2 small dark glass jars (4 oz /120 ml) (4 fl. oz/ 120 ml )
Materials
Solid Oils
- 57 g shea butter (refined)
- 7 g cocoa butter
- 6 g cetyl alcohol
- 5 g coconut oil (refined) or virgin
Cooling phase A
- 46 g sweet almond oil alternative liquid oils: grapeseed oil, apricot kernel oil, safflower oil, fractionated coconut oil
- 1.3 g vitamin e oil (optional)
- 0.5 g bergamot essential oil approx. 1/8 tsp (optional)
- 0.5 g lavender essential oil approx. 1/8 tsp (optional)
- 0.3 g sweet orange essential oil approx. 1/16 tsp (optional)
Cooling phase B
- 6 g cornstarch or arrowroot powder
Instructions
Preparation
- Using a kitchen scale, measure the ingredients in the solid oils group into a small stainless steel pan. Measure the Cooling Phase A group into a jar and the cornstarch into a small container.
- Lay your utensils out and have the mixer set up and ready.
Melt the Solid Oils
- The solid oils and cetyl alcohol need to be melted over indirect heat. Create a double boiler by filling a saucepan a third of the way with hot water. Bring it to a simmer, and set the pan of solid oils inside. Stir and allow all the solid oils to fully melt.
- Remove the pan from the heat and set it on a potholder. Allow it to cool for one minute.
Add the Cooling Phase A Ingredients
- Next, pour the Cooling Phase A ingredients into the mixer bowl, or another kitchen bowl if you're using a hand mixer or whisk. This includes the liquid oil, vitamin E oil (optional), and essential oils (optional).
- Pour the melted butters into the bowl now, too, and stir well.
- Refrigerate the bowl until the oils turn opaque and the middle is slightly thick. This takes about thirty minutes.
Whipping the Body Butter
- Sift the cornstarch into the bowl using a sieve. Stir well.
- Ideally, using an electric mixer, whip the mixture for three to five minutes on high. Use the silicone spatula to push the solid oils at the sides of the bowl back into the center. The aim is to create a lot of tiny air bubbles in the mixture, so don't stir them out at any point past this step.
- Put the bowl back in the refrigerator for ten minutes. When you take it out, the mixture should all be white and set enough to not move when tilted. Bring it back to the mixer.
- Whip for three to five minutes longer. The homemade body butter will be creamy, glossy, and white when finished. It reminds me of a very creamy cake icing or even meringue.
Storing Body Butter
- Spoon the body butter into containers* and leave it to set for a full day before using. Store in a cool place and use within a year or six months of opening.
Can I substitute the cocoa butter with beef tallow? It’s difficult to get cocoa butter. And if the cetyl alcohol is liquid would you still add it with the melted oils?
Hi Bev, you could substitute tallow for all the oils and butters in this recipe if you wish. As for cetyl alcohol, it always comes in hard white pellets. If you have something that’s liquid at room temperature, it’s something else! It could be that a ingredient was mislabelled and sent to you so check with the seller/manufacturer.
Wow, can I give this 10 stars? This formula is a serious winner! It will be fun to experiment with different essential oils for scent options.
Thank you so much, Mary :) And YES! The essential oils can be changed if you’d like. It would be wonderful with rose, lavender, rose geranium, neroli, and many others.
Hello, I just made this. I omitted the VE oil and essential oils. What is the role of Cetyl alcohol? I read it can cause some issues in sensitive skin or eczema. Lovely Body Butter.
Thank you
Janie
Hi Janie, I wrote about cetyl alcohol in the text before the recipe card if you want to have a look. Basically, it’s a plant-derived fatty alcohol that works as an emollient (softens, smooths, moisturizes), thickener, and stabilizer. It’s not like the type of alcohol that most people are familiar with and does not cause drying or skin issues for the vast majority of people. It’s an important part of this recipe and one that I wouldn’t leave out.
Hello, I’ve encountered a problem with the ingredients total which comes to 129.6g not 120g. Your jars are 120ml but your ingredients are in grams. Could this be where the discrepancy is? If so do you have the total in grams for the quantity please as I want to be able to increase the batch size on my spreadsheet. Many thanks
Hi Chris, ml (milliliters) is volume and grams is weight. They are different types of measurements.
Hi Tanya, Thank you for your response to my query. What I was hoping for was if you had the total grams of the finished product. Many thanks
I think you answered your own question when you added up the weight of the ingredients. What makes you think the finished product weight would be different?
It was very easy to make; the instructions were really clear. The body butter smells gorgeous and absorbs really well into the skin. It was my first attempt but I’ll definitely be making it again!
I can’t find measuring spoons in grams. How can I convert this recipe to ml?
Good soap and skincare recipes are always given in weight, not volume. My advice is to buy a kitchen scale.
Hello Tanya..I am very interested to purchase your E-Book on making 30 recipies for skin cream and lotions. Thanks so much..
Diana
I’m excited to try this butter. I make your soaps with great results! :)
What would be the outcome of this butter if I used mango butter, instead of cocoa butter?
Hiya, it would be a bit thinner but would be perfectly fine :)
Thank you for the information. :)
I just made a big batch of this for Christmas gifts and it turned out beautifully. Since it’s for the holidays, I used peppermint and benzoin for a candy cane scent, but next time want to try it with the lavender. This is a really great recipe that I’ll use again and again. Thanks for sharing it!
Hi Tanya
Just a bit confused about using unrefined and refined products. I was under the impression that unrefined was best, but I note that you say refined in the recipe. Any help would be great as I am new to this.
Love the website.
Hi Lorraine, there’s a lot of confusion out there on this topic so you’re not alone. Just by making this recipe the ingredients become refined/processed but lightly-so. The same thing happens when you prepare an evening meal – the ingredients are processed to make the final dish. As for the ingredients in this recipe, you can choose to use refined or unrefined, as you wish. However, unrefined shea butter has a smoky scent that some people find unpleasant – I’m one of them! To get all the conditioning benefits of shea butter without the scent, we use refined shea butter, and that’s why I recommend it for the recipe. Coconut oil is another that has a scent when unrefined. It has a lovely coconut scent but not everyone likes it and it can interfere with the scent of the essential oils. Hope this helps :)
Hello, I’ve been using the unrefined shea butter because your link for this recipe on Amazon is unrefined shea butter and that’s what I purchased. It does have an odd smell in soap but I wasn’t sure what that ingredient was until I read this post. So you might want to change your link to a refined source. I haven’t made this body butter yet and I’m glad I read these comments first. I still have 1 lb of the unrefined left and I’m going to use it all to make soap with different scents.
Thank you so much for drawing my attention to this and I’m so sorry! The link is now changed to a refined shea butter product. In soap, you can still smell it a bit but strong essential oils help to mask the scent.
Ho there
What can I use in place of cetyl alcohol, for the body butter recipe.
Thank You
Warm Regards
Rasheeda
This recipe really needs it for it to be its best. There’s a link in the recipe ingredients for where to get it.