I’ve been thoroughly smitten with cocoa butter (USA / Canada) ever since my first tub of it arrived. This brittle, cream-coloured butter smells like super delicious chocolate, and it is a wonderful addition in all kinds of body butters, lotions, and balms. It melts around 34°C/93°F, which is slightly below body temperature, meaning it’ll slowly melt into your skin upon contact. It melts to a fairly thin oil that absorbs quickly, leaving you smelling lick-ably delicious. If smelling like chocolate isn’t your thing you can purchase deodorized cocoa butter (USA / Canada), which works just as well.
Because cocoa butter (USA / Canada) is so firm at room temperature it can be used to thicken up your concoctions, though it isn’t in the same league as beeswax, candelilla wax, or carnauba wax—the significantly lower melting point of cocoa butter (USA / Canada) means you need quite a bit of it to thicken concoctions. Check out this experiment I did on cocoa butter (USA / Canada) and olive oil (pomace) (USA / Canada) combinations to see what I mean 😉
Cocoa butter is a bit lonely in its “brittle butters” category, with only kokum and illipe to keep it company. This means it is pretty hard to swap out; other common oils and butters like coconut and shea are far too soft to substitute for it. Most cocoa butter (USA / Canada) you can purchase is pale and cream coloured, but there’s also a dark option. I have purchased the dark version before and used it in a few recipes, but I’ve found it to be more of a novelty than truly useful, and I’ll usually choose the creamy, pale variety for most projects. You can “fake” the dark stuff by adding a bit of brown iron oxide or cocoa powder to your recipes, which will save you some money 😉
So, without further ado—10 awesome recipes to make with cocoa butter (USA / Canada)!
1. Cocoa Butter Bath Milk
Amp up a pampering bath with this delicious (and simple) blend of cocoa butter (USA / Canada), silk, and powdered milk. We’re taking advantage of cocoa butter (USA / Canada)‘s brittle texture to blitz it into a fine powder with the milk powder, giving us a lovely chocolatey scented powder that’s basically hot cocoa for your tub. Pair it with a healthy dose of Epsom salts and a good book for the best results.
2. Chocolate Lip Butter
This utterly decadent, slightly sticky, super hydrating Chocolate Lip Butter is amazing. Some added lecithin adds some stick to the otherwise silky, thin cocoa butter (USA / Canada) to make for a lip butter you’ll have a hard time sharing with your friends.
3. Naked Lip Balm
My Naked Lip Balm is a favourite with loads of friends and acquaintances, who often come back to me a couple weeks or months after I’ve gifted them a tube to tell me they don’t usually like lip balm, but mine is their favourite. BAM. This recipe blends honey scented beeswax, tropical coconut oil, and delicious coconut butter to create an incredible smelling fragrance free lip balm. Yum!
4. Creamy Cocoa Body Truffles
These beautiful body butter nuggets were inspired by a trip to a local chocolate shop; a creamy core of unrefined shea butter (USA / Canada) is enrobed in a crisp coating of glossy cocoa butter (USA / Canada). I used dark cocoa butter (USA / Canada), but you can definitely use the pale stuff (and add a touch of brown iron oxide to get the same look, if you want). You’ll definitely need to include instructions about these not being edible when you give them away!
5. Rocky Mountain Foot Butter
This luscious butter is a reader favourite, and its not hard to see why. Rich, thick, and creamy, it has a wee tingle from the inclusion of some menthol and smells like the forest on a crisp (and slightly minty) morning. The comments are full of some pretty cool stories—here’s one from Cristie:
” I slammed my toes into a door this week. I’m a toe stubber. Once a year I’m going to stub my toes and I know the series of colors and swellings that take place after one of these events. There’s no bypassing the unpleasantness. Until now.
1..stub toe. Excruciating pain. Swear words, teary eyes, chastises to my clumsy self.
2..next morning the expected swelling and scary deep red color. Now I know that the next day the purple is coming. It always does, then comes purple black, then black green and then yellow green and I’m good to go.
3..except purple never came. I rubbed this foot butter on GENTLY and the next morning said toe had gone from hot angry red to light red. Still hurts but even the swelling is down and I’m now on Day 5. No bruise. This should have earned me a beautiful purple bruise.”
6. Clay, Cocoa, and Shea Vegan Deodorant
I love this blend of cocoa butter (USA / Canada), unrefined shea butter (USA / Canada), and coconut oil. Paired with clay, starch, and baking soda (USA / Canada) it makes a lovely wax-free deodorant that battles pit stink for hours. If you’d rather watch it, I’ve also made a video of the recipe!
7. Perfect Body Butter Bars
These bars are made from a finely tuned blend of cocoa butter (USA / Canada), coconut oil, and beeswax, and when you use the unrefined, scented version of each you’re rewarded with utterly decadent body butter bars that smell divine without any added fragrance. Swoon.
8. Easiest Body Butter Bars Ever
If we’re being honest, these body butter bars are so easy it’s pretty much cheating… but that doesn’t mean I don’t love them. It’s really just melt and pour (measurements are optional) and you’ve got a beautiful cocoa-y bar in no time. Mmmm.
9. Cocoa Mint Whipped Soap
This fun whipped soap is really marshmallowy, which is pretty unique in the whipped soap world, thanks to the use of cocoa butter (USA / Canada) (rather than pure stearic acid) as the thickening/hardening fat.
10. Mocha Face Mask
I adore my weekly face masks for pore-purging, brightening my complexion, and helping to boost healing. This one features blitzed cocoa butter (USA / Canada) powder and coffee beans with clay to make for a lightly exfoliating mask that’s utterly lovely 🙂
Well, those are my top 10 recipes to make with cocoa butter (USA / Canada)! What do you love to make?
I love cocoa butter in my soaps. But my favourite is probably used in lip chap!
And what a fun post! It made finding cocoa butter recipes easy as pie!
Thanks, Penny! 😀
Hello just wanted to say that yes coco butter is incredible but having it in your bath is a no no it will eventually block the drains as it hardens. Please tell your customers that coconut oil is another one not to be putting down our drains.
Ohh Marie this is a wonderful post, I love cocoa butter! And it’s easy to find it where I live, besides being cheap. So thank you for reminding me the different recipes I can make with it.
Thanks so much, Anna! Happy making 🙂
I’ve made #3,5,7,8 & 10.
Thanks for these reminders because tomorrow I’m going to make #1. Lucky me!!
Well guess what? A few months ago, my husband tore his (this won’t be spelled correctly) miniscus. Something behind the kneecap. He won’t have surgery till late Fall because of the work season. Stubborn coot. In the meantime, I rub the awesome Rocky Mountain Foot Balm on his knee every night. He can’t sleep without this stuff. Aaaaand either can I with all the moaning and other pain sounds, otherwise.
And he’s hurt his shoulder recently, about 3 weeks now, and that needs the rub too. It’s amazing stuff.
Anyone still reading this long reply who hasn’t made it yet, make it! I stand behind her recipe as a major MAJOR pain reducer and de-sweller. Can’t run my home without it.
Or the tiger roller thing.
Wow! Hearing your love of the Rocky Mountain Foot Butter is helping me remember to try it when I’m sore somewhere… I think my barre class quads may have met their match 😛 Thanks for sharing!
Hey Marie your utube videos are awesome.love the way I can see what you’re doing from the above angle and that it’s not cluttered with other stuff like many others are. Your music in the background is just right, and you can be yourself. Well done.
Thanks so much, Lynn! I’m having lots of fun with them 😀
Thanks for another great post Marie. Also, I am LOVING your YouTube videos. So enjoyable to watch. Informative and fun!
Thank you so much, Alyssa! 😀
i’ve just added this post to my bookmarks. i have only tried shea butter so far but love it. am looking forward to trying mango & cocoa butters too. you forgot one of your most luscious-looking recipes though–your whipped mocha body frosting. that stuff looks good enough to eat but i won’t.
Thanks, Linda! It was so hard to choose just 10 recipes for this, so I tried to get a good variety… to be honest, I want to eat most things made with cocoa butter! 😛
Just getting started in lotion, lip balm etc area. Looking forward to trying some of your recipes.
Thanks, Mary! Happy making 😀
I am wondering if food grade cocoa butter (also called cacao butter) is the same thing? My health store sells it at $2.95/kg (Aussie dollars), but if i buy it at a DIY place its $28.50/kg (deodorised).
It should be—just check the ingredients to make sure it’s just cocoa butter, with no added sugar or other ingredients 🙂 Good find!
Ahem, i stand corrected. The cocoa butter in health shop is $18.50, i misread the receipt. Lucky it isn’t $2.965/kg (or i’d buy a truck load)! It is pure cocoa butter 🙂
That’s still a pretty darn good price! Enjoy it 😉 Doubly so, in fact, since you can eat it—NOM!
Dear Marie, a big hello from Croatia!!!
I have been following you for a long time and I must say, with 99% certainty that you are the best maker in the world! I haven’t seen it all, but I have seen a bunch! Your imagination is just beautiful, the way you desribe things, I can almost scent them! I have been making cosmetics and living of it for years and you are my true inspiration! Thank you for sharing your knowledge and your love with the rest of the world <3
Paula
Thank you so, so much Paula! I really appreciate your kind words 🙂
The favorite recipe of mine is my winter face cream. It is so nourishing and rich, and so simple! In spite of having oily skin, that gets kinda crazy in winter I love applying this rich cream to my face, it makes my skin very soft and less oily, closer to normal type.
Cocoa butter – 5%
Grapeseed oil (not refined) – 10%
Olivem 1000 – 5%
Water (oh hydrolate of your choise) – 80%
Germall plus – 0,3% (or any other preservative)
If you can add 1% of Vitamin E or vitamins A,E,F mix – it will be perfect!
Great to use along with some simple serum that contains hyaluronic acid.
Hello Tati!
Isn’t it weird that the comedogenic scale that many put so much faith in, isn’t really all that true for all skin types? This is my all time favourite cocoa butter inspired formula by Marie. Have you tried it?