Scent of the orient: Whipped Body Butter

Those long and hot summer days are over and the dark, short and gloomy autumn days are replacing them faster than one could imagine. It is unbelievable that we had some 30 ^oC last week.

To pamper the skin and prepare it for the dry and cold climate and to uplift the mood we've prepared a body butter with a nice skin feel and a divine scent of the orient.

The scent combo of this butter comes from vanilla, cinnamon and cardamom (well, vanilla has not much to do with the orient but it perfectly matches the warm scents of cardamom and cinnamon).

We've applied our modified rice starch in this formulation to provide you with an example of its applications. The starch reduces the greasiness of the butter so that you can apply it over your face and body without feeling any greasiness or shine accompanying oils and butters. It improves the texture and feel and add a luxurious touch to the whole formulation. Apart from that, the rice starch makes the colour a little bit lighter. We have applied 1% sunflower lecithin in this formulation which has quite a noticeable colour but by blending the rice starch, the colour becomes much lighter, almost insignificant (although we have hoped for a darker colour to match the scent combo).

Left: Butter with lecithin and without starch, Right: Butter with lecithin and starch

You can whip this balm or keep it unwhipped. The whipped butter has a lighter colour and a more luxurious appearance but it's up to you which way to go (or make both versions). The whole formulation and procedure is quite easy.

Ingredients:

Procedure:

1- Weight all phases in separate beakers. You're only going to heat phase A and the beaker should be heat resistant.

2- Heat phase A in a water bath at about 60 ^oC. Stir during heating. When all the wax and butter are melted  remove the beaker from heat and stir gently to cool down a little bit.

3- Add phase B and start cooling. You can keep the beaker in an ice bath or in the fridge. Don't forget to stir the content during cool down.

4- As the content comes to a light trace, add phase C that contains the starch. Starch obviously doesn't dissolve in oil and it sediments upon sitting but it should be evenly dispersed without any clumps as you add this phase to the previous phase. As you add this phase, the butter becomes softer again. Put the beaker back in the fridge and continue stirring it every 5-7 minutes.

5- When it comes to a heavy trace again add phase D and stir. You can start whipping at this point.

The butter becomes softer again and you start whipping. You may need to whip the butter in several stages with cooling intervals. Whip until you reach the desired consistency.

6- Fill the butter in jars and keep the jars for another 24 hours in the fridge.

We've designed this butter for the autumn/winter in central Europe. You may need to tweak the formulation according to the ambient temperature and your climate zone. Prepare a 30-50 gr batch for the first time (you can not whip this quantity) and decide how to proceed further according to the consistency of this trial batch. You may need to add more butters and wax for a harder consistency or reduce the wax concentration for a softer butter.

If you're inspired by this tutorial feel free to send us your photos and comment either per mail or to our Facebook page. If you post any photos on Instagram, don't forget to tag @SkinChakra.

BeHappy and have fun