Meet "Sucrose Stearate"

At the moment, I'm obsessed with "sucrose stearate" and after reading this post you'll share my obsession.

Sucrose stearate belongs to the popular group of sucrose esters, a group of natural emulsifiers where sugar (sucrose) is esterified with a fatty acid from plant oils (stearic acid). It is completely natural (but not palm-free) and since it belongs to the nonionic emulsifiers it could be blended with all other emulsifiers to improve the texture and stability and to modify the viscosity. I'm not a fan of HLB system but just for your information, it has an approximate HLB of 15.

I love the verstaility of this emulsifier and the multiple methods you can apply it. You can add sucrose stearate to the water phase or to the oil phase, or even better, run a one-pot method when you blend all ingredients from the very begining in a single vessel (this is extremely helpful for small volumes). You can do hot process, cold process, medium temperature process or hot-cold process. What else shall a formulator wish?

The texture and skin feel of the emulsions are very light, the dosage extremely low (2-3% for 5-60% oil). Sucrose stearate gives rather low viscosity emulsions from sprayable emulsions to light milks. The viscosity however could be adjusted by varying the oil phase concentration, varying the blending method, the hydrocolloid or applying a second emulsifier or co-emulsifier. the options are innumerable.

Sucrose stearate is a fine white powder.

I'm going to share various formulations and procedure with you during the coming weeks. Just for now and till you have your emulsifier ready to start with me I'm going to share with your two photos. The title photo of this post is a ligh milk with 10% almond oil and 2% sucrose stearate prepared in a one-pot cold process.

The emulsion in the above photo is a sprayable emulsion with 30% in a cold process .

Have your sucrose stearate at hand and get ready to make exciting emulsion with me during the coming weeks.