Our indulgent Chocolate Cherry theme continues today with a decadent whipped body butter that could easily be mistaken for dessert! This soft, marshmallowy body butter stars fragrant cocoa butter, silky cherry kernel oil, and lightweight mango butter—and it’s utterly lovely. I worked through many variations of this formulation, both in terms of ingredients and process, to create a whipped body butter formulation that stays light and soft despite containing quite a lot of brittle cocoa butter, and I’m so thrilled with how it turned out. Let’s get whippy!

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I’ve selected a combination of soft mango butter and brittle, chocolatey-scented cocoa butter for our butter blend. While cocoa butter is utterly lovely, due to its hard consistency (think of a bar of dark chocolate) it is a tricky thing to include in whipped body butters in high concentrations—too much and the body butter will start to be brittle as well, meaning we don’t get that soft, whippy consistency. The butter will whip up well initially, but after sitting for a while it’ll get hard and crumbly. To counter that I incorporated some mango butter, which is a soft solid at room temperature. For further thickening/stabilizing I’ve also included some cetyl alcohol. In addition to being a very effective thickener, cetyl alcohol has a beautiful powdery finish and lovely slip that is very luxurious feeling.

I’m not a big fan of products that feel heavy or greasy, so I’ve included a few ingredients to keep this Chocolate Cherry Whipped Body Butter feeling light on the skin. One of the biggest reasons I chose mango butter over similarly-soft shea butter is because mango butter has a significantly lighter skin feel. Shea butter tends to linger on the skin, leaving a slightly tacky, oily feel—mango butter absorbs in a flash. I also included some cornstarch, which is a really easy and inexpensive way to reduce the greasy feel of anhydrous products.

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I’m often asked if whipped body butters will melt in hot weather. The short answer is “yes”—for a longer answer please refer to this FAQ. If you live somewhere significantly hotter (10°C+) than I do (the inside of my home is approximately 21°C/70°F), you’re likely going to want to take a few steps back in the formulation process to ensure the butter/liquid oil ratio works for you and your climate. I’d start by making this formulation as-written without scaling. Leave the mixture to set up for about 12 hours after the initial whippings and then check the consistency. If it’s too hard I’d dial back the cetyl alcohol, replacing it with more cherry kernel oil. If it’s too soft, I’d incorporate more cetyl alcohol, reducing the cherry kernel oil. Be sure to take careful notes about all your changes! Keep tweaking until you’re happy with the butter consistency after it’s been sitting undisturbed for at least 12 hours. Pretty much any blend of butters can have a lovely consistency directly after whipping—what we want is one that keeps that consistency.

The finished body butter is soft and whippy, with a soft chocolate scent from the cocoa butter and a subtle red colour thanks to the inclusion of a bit of red mica. I highly recommend choosing a super-fragrant cocoa butter for this DIY, though you could also supplement the chocolatey scent with a cocoa-y fragrance oil (or even a chocolate-cherry one!). Take care when transferring this to your jar so it keeps its decadent consistency. Enjoy!

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Chocolate Cherry Whipped Body Butter

Heated phase
4.75g | 19% cocoa butter
9.5g | 38% mango butter
0.125g | 0.5% cherry coloured mica
1.25g | 5% cetyl alcohol
1.75g | 7% corn starch
7.5g | 30% cherry kernel oil

Cool down phase
0.125g | 0.5% Vitamin E MT-50 (USA / Canada)

Prepare a water bath by bringing about 3cm/1″ of water to a bare simmer over low to medium-low heat in a small saucepan.

Weigh the heated phase ingredients into a small heat-resistant bowl that’s deep and large enough for whipping in. Place the bowl in the water bath to melt the butter through. Once the mixture has liquified, remove the bowl from the heat.

Now it’s time to chill the mixture. I placed it in the freezer for ten minutes. You don’t want the body butter to be rock hard, but it should be solid on the edges with a slightly gooey center. When you get there, it’s time to whip it!

Grab your electric beaters and whip away for about one minute, and then scrape down the sides before whipping for another two or so minutes. Continue to scrape down the bowl and whip until the body butter is light (both in consistency and colour) and makes quite soft, marshmallowy folds when you stir it. I left it for about 20 minutes, whipped it up again, and then left the body butter to come fully to room temperature by leaving it overnight.

Once it’s settled at room temperature, give it a poke and make sure you’re still happy with the consistency—that it hasn’t melted into a puddle or anything unpleasant (side note: if you are swapping out the mango butter or otherwise fiddling with the core butter/oil ratios, you’ll want to leave the whipped butter for at least 12 hours to ensure it’s not seizing up—as I was developing this formula I was leaving the whipped butters for days to test the ratios… this is the territory you’ll be in if you don’t like the consistency after an hour. If you live somewhere quite hot, please read this.). If you’re happy with the consistency, we can incorporate our cool down phase and move on!

To weigh out the cool down ingredients you’ll need to use an accurate scale as they are present at very low amounts—preferably a scale accurate to 0.01g. As these more accurate scales tend to have fairly low (100–200g) maximum weights you likely won’t be able to put the entire batch of body butter on that scale without blowing it out (if you can, go for it!). So—grab a smaller dish. Add a scoop or two of body butter, and then weigh the cool down ingredients into that, using the more accurate scale. Stir to thoroughly incorporate, and then transfer that back into the master batch of body butter. Whip that all together.

Gently spoon the finished body butter into a jar, taking care not to squash it too much. I used a 30mL (1fl oz) plastic jar and that worked well for this 25g batch. That’s it! To use, massage into skin that could use some pampering and enjoy. Make sure you store the body butter in a temperature somewhat similar to the one in which it was made—it will readily melt if exposed to high temperatures, and it won’t have that lovely whippy consistency when it re-solidifies.

Shelf Life & Storage

Because this body butter is 100% oil-based, it does not require a broad-spectrum preservative (broad spectrum preservatives ward off microbial growth, and microbes require water to live—no water, no microbes!). Kept reasonably cool and dry, it should last at least a year before any of the oils go rancid. If you notice it starts to smell like old nuts or crayons, that’s a sign that the oils have begun to oxidize; chuck it out and make a fresh batch if that happens.

Substitutions

As always, be aware that making substitutions will change the final product. While these swaps won’t break the recipe, you will get a different final product than I did.

• As I’ve provided this recipe in percentages as well as grams you can easily calculate it to any size using a simple spreadsheet as I’ve explained in this post. As written in grams this recipe will make 25g, which fills a 30mL (1fl oz) jar nicely once it’s been whipped up.
• To learn more about the ingredients used in this recipe, including why they’re included and what you can substitute them with, please visit the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia. It doesn’t have everything in it yet, but there’s lots of good information there! If I have not given a specific substitution suggestion in this list please look up the ingredient in the encyclopedia before asking.
• If you want to use a different butter/butter blend (this includes the cetyl alcohol) you’ll likely need to re-develop the formulation to get the correct butter to oil ratio. Read the pre-amble for details.
• The mica is optional; replace it with more cornstarch if you don’t want to use it.
• You could use a different starch (arrowroot, wheat, tapioca) instead of cornstarch.
• You could choose a mid-to-light weight liquid oil instead of cherry kernel oil.
• You could add an essential oil or fragrance oil to the formula.
• If you’d like to create a simpler whipped body butter with cherry kernel oil I’d look to this formulation for inspiration. Note that it does not include cocoa butter; you could use a chocolatey fragrance oil instead of the orange essential oil to get the cocoa note.

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