Pamper your skin in winter: Natural Virgin Coconut Oil Cream

We have recently had an ingredient's chat in the entrepreneur group about coconut oil and I was inspired to make an emulsion with coconut oil as the main lipophilic ingredient.

This was quite a fun project. Frankly I have never before applied coconut oil in an emulsion (except for hair milks and hair conditioners). I apply coconut oil in my soaps, some balms and butters but never tried it in an emulsion in such concentrations.

This is as well a commitment to my KISS (Keep It Silly Simple) principle to make skin care products with a simple formulation as as less ingredients as possible rather than making a cocktail of tens of oils and hydrosols.

To my astonishment, the result was quite satisfactory and the skin feel was much better than I have anticipated. Not being quite sure about 25% coconut oil in an emulsion, I designed it originally as a foot cream but I find the skin feel quite attractive for a hand & body cream as well (at least during fall-winter).

I decided to use Xyliance as the emulsifier. Xyliance (INCI: Cetearyl Wheat Straw Glycosedes(and) Cetearyl Alcohol) from Soliance is one of the first natural emulsifiers I started working with and it is still one of my favourites. It is very easy to work with, created emulsions and creams with an excellent stability, a nice texture and skin feel. It is rather suitable for high oil phase concentration (>25%) but I have had some low oil phase emulsions as well. As you can judge from the photo, the emulsions are very shiny and silky and the emulsifier does not impart and additional color to the emulsion (this is the case for most "natural" emulsifiers).

The trick or challenge by working with lipophilic ingredients like coconut oil, babassu oil, shea butter, cacao butter and other solid lipophilic ingredients is the importance of the cool-down process. If you leave the emulsion by its own, the high melting point component will crystalize and cause graininess, clumps and destabilization. A continuous stirring by cooling might be a challenge to artisan emulsion makers who usually work with a hand-held blender and do not apply any overhead mixers. This might be quite easy as you work with small volumes (50-200 ml) but is almost impossible for higher volumes. The stirring would have a negative impact on the emulsion stability.

Since we suppose that as a student or artisan emulsion maker, you're preparing small volumes however, I share this fun and easy formulation with you.

Don't beintimidated by the long list of ingredients. The procedure is really simple.

Xyliance is a very forgiving emulsifier. You can prepare stable emulsions by adding the water phase into the oil phase or vice versa. I have the impression however, that the emulsions are smoother when the water phase is added to the oil phase.

Instruction:

In two separate beakers heat phase [A] and phase [B] to 70 degrees centigrade. Blend each phase separately with a glass spatula or any other suitable tool.

As both phases are completely liquid and smooth add the water phase to the oil phase and keep stirring the oil phase. (Do not heat up the phases after both are melted, forget about the misleading and false "heat & hold" theory that would damage and degrade your ingredients. )You can simply manage this step with a hand held whisk or spatula for low volumes.

After the two phases are blended and a primary emulsion is made, homogenize the emulsion for a few minutes with a homogenizer or a suitable kitchen mixer. Read our series of "Kitchen meets cosmetic lab" for more infos about the kitchen mixers I've used and can recommend.

After a short homogenization, continue with gentle stirring while cooling the emulsion in an ice bath, cold water bath or in simply at ambient temperature if your lab is not too warm.

Blend the ingredients in phase [C] and add to the emulsion as the temperature is around 35 degrees. Add the squakane as well and stir further. At this point, you can add the gum. I disperse the gum in 99.5% glycerine. It is a very easy way to add the gum to an emulsion and avoid clumps without the need to applying a turbo mixer. After adding the gum you may need to homogenize the emulsion once more for 30-60 seconds. Now it's time to add the essential oils.

For preserving this emulsion (my extract and hydrosol are already preserved), I decided to apply Euxyl® K903 and the natural "Antimicrobial blend". After adding the preservative, it's time to adjust the pH.

We had to add a few drops of sodium bicarbonate solution to bring the pH between 5.0-5.5 which is the optimum pH for this preservative system and is in range of Xyliance as well.

As I mentioned before, the cool down phase is extremely important by this emulsion. Ask your lotion buddy to help you with stirring. The emulsion should be continuously stirred during the cool down and that could be quite tiresome if you're not applying any overhead mixer.

The viscosity of the emulsion would be established after about 24 hours.

I hope you'll enjoy this recipe and its excellent skin feel.

BeHappy and have fun