Body Butter Batch #1

I got some cool body butter in Canada from a fellow hostel guest. It had the recipe on the side, so I've been planning to make more. Naturally, my ingredients haven't all arrived at the same time. I picked up some coconut oil at a local health food store, and my shea butter arrived today. Even though my palm oil and new essential oils haven't arrived, I'm almost out of the stuff I got in Canada. On the theory that anything containing Shea Butter and Coconut Oil is probably going to be pretty OK, I'm going to give a partial recipe a try.

Ingredients
100 g	shea butter (solid @ room temp)
65 g	coconut oil (solid @ room temp)
35 g	almond oil (liquid @ room temp)
2 tbsp	cornstarch
	essential oils

Method

I put a pyrex bowl on the base of my scale and set zero. Then I scooped in 100 grams of shea butter (the metric was more finely graduated). I scooped about 50 grams of coconut oil, then a little more. I was worried that too much almond oil would make it too runny at room temp. Then I added almond oil till the total weight was 200 g (I had to thump the counter to get the scale to register).

I put the 200 g of oils in the microwave and cooked on high at 30 second intervals for about 2 minutes (stirring every 30 secs). The shea butter still had a few little lumps in the bottom, but I left it on the counter about 5 minutes and they were all melted when I came back.

I put the bowl in an ice bath and began mixing with my hand mixer. This is *lots* better than sticking the bowl in the freezer!!! I added the cornstarch while the mix was still pretty liquid. I tried to measure by weight for consistency, but it was too light to register, so 2 tbsp it is!

I added essential oils when the mix began to thicken. I used rosemary, tea tree, eucalyptus, and peppermint. Too much eucalyptus -- i thought one of my bottles of eucalyptus was peppermint, and I couldn't figure out why my mix kept smelling like eucalyptus and not mint!

Kept mixing, now on high speed. I scraped the sides with a spoon several times -- the mix would harden because of the ice water bath. Eventually, it seemed colder than room temp, so I stopped. No point trying to cool it further, since it'll just warm up again. I spooned it into two short cream cheese tubs; they're each about 3/4 full.

Result: Fluffy off-white goop. Kind of a whipped frosting consistency, between cold cream and cool whip. It melts quickly on contact with my hands. I feel the cornstarch as a very very fine grittiness when I'm rubbing it into my skin -- it helps it keep from feeling slimy/oily, but I'm not sure how I like it. Though the mix is very strong smelling in the tub, it's not that strong on my skin.