If you have ever dreamed of living in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, or figure the best superpower ever would be the ability to eat as much chocolate as possible without it having any calories, I think this lip balm is for you. Decadent, super-fragrant cocoa butter is paired with golden liquid nutty goodness macadamia nut oil to create a lip treat that is easily confused for dessert. Yum.
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The two stars of this lip balm are lovely and indispensable (read: no substitutions!). Cocoa butter smells intoxicatingly of chocolate, and also contributes some hardness along with its beautiful melts-at-body-temperature glide. Macadamia nut oil is the only cosmetic grade nut oil I’ve ever worked with that smells like nuts, which is why we’re using it here. Nut oils like almond, hazelnut, and walnut just smell like oil, with none of that “can I make a cheesecake with this?!” mouthwatering scent (isn’t cheesecake everybody’s first thought when they find something decadent? No? Just me?). If you have another lightweight, liquid oil that smells like the most beautiful toasted nuts around you can use that instead as the nutty smell is the characteristic we’re choosing macadamia nut oil for, I just haven’t found such an oil. Tamanu is nutty, but not yummy food nutty, so I wouldn’t really recommend it here.
Since we’re getting all the scent from our ingredients, we don’t need any essential oils—just make sure your cocoa butter and macadamia nut oil are top notch 👌🏻 Once you’ve got all that sorted, all that’s left is weighing, melting, pouring, and a bit of waiting. Making your own lip balm is one of the easiest DIYs out there, and one of the biggest money savers if you’re a lip thing junkie like me (or Penny, haha). Alright—let’s make some Chocolate Macadamia Nut Vegan Lip Balm!
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Chocolate Macadamia Nut Vegan Lip Balm
4g | 0.14oz candelilla wax
7g | 0.25oz cocoa butter (USA / Canada)
4g | 0.14oz babassu oil
9g | 0.32oz macadamia nut oil
0.1g | 0.0035oz 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 all the ingredients into a small heat-resistant glass measuring cup. Place the measuring cup in your prepared water bath to melt everything through.
After about 20–30 minutes everything should be completely melted through. Remove the water bath from the heat, remove the measuring cup from the water bath, and dry it off with a dish towel. Stir with a flexible silicone spatula to incorporate.
Pour the lip balm into tubes or tins (this recipe will fill six standard lip balm tubes), and leave it to solidify (20–30 minutes) before capping. Make sure you wipe down the tubes or tins with some paper towel before applying any labels (I love these labels) so they stick—if there’s any oil on your tubes they’ll peel right off. Enjoy your Chocolate Macadamia Nut Vegan Lip Balm!
Shelf Life & Storage
Because this lip balm 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
- Don’t swap out the cocoa butter. If you don’t want it to smell like chocolate, make a different lip balm recipe that’s more to your tastes.
- You can use a different lightweight, nutty liquid oil if you can find one
- You can use refined coconut oil instead of babassu oil
- You can use carnauba wax instead of candelilla wax
- If you want to add an essential oil that compliments the cocoa/nut combo (something vanilla-y would be good), add that while stirring after removing the liquid lip balm from the heat.
Great timing! I just bought a bottle of local Pecan oil yesterday. I had to have it after I smelled and tasted a sample of it and thought I’d only be using it in pies. Now I’ll be using it on my lips too thanks to you. Christmas presents too. Yahoo, thank you so much.
Oooh, that sounds downright decadent! I’m rather envious 🙂 Enjoy!
Hi, Marie This balm looks and sounds wonderful and I have none of the oil you used. I did however, find a bottle of hazelnut oil that I bought from our local health food store. It doesn’t smell very much but tastes amazing. Will try it shortly. Love all your recipes that I have tried so far.
Report back! I’ll be interested to hear how it goes 🙂
the ultimate vegan lip balm would be a mashup of this recipe with your bayberry recipe. when I read about vegan lip balms, people say they are too thin and not rich enough, so it’s obvious that most brands/recipes are using carnauba or candelilla. if we can hit the right combination of bayberry with one of the C’s we’ll be there!
I’ve also heard really good things about soy wax being a good, still-creamy alternative for beeswax; I need to get myself some!
Love the washboard!
Thanks! I don’t remember where I got it, but it has such great texture to it 🙂
Just tried this one yesterday and I swapped the coconut oil for refined shea butter, as it is still quite warm in my country and the lip balms tend to be too soft.
It came out so nice and soft, but it seems like the wax still doesn’t hold enough and it had a crack on the top and the balm didn’t come out so nicely. Also, I’m afraid my candellila wax is about to go off, the balm does smell like chocolate but has this hint of weird wax smell in it…
Still love the texture though!
Hmm—I think the softness is likely related to it being warm where you are! Waxes are great thickeners and hardeners, but if it’s 20°C warmer where you are then you will likely notice a slightly softer product 🙂 Candelilla wax lasts for ages, so unless yours is close to a decade old I wouldn’t be concerned about spoilage; some readers have reported that theirs has quite a strong smell, though, so that might be what you’re smelling 🙂 Mine doesn’t smell like much of anything, but maybe my nose isn’t very good haha.
Oh, great! ^^ thanks for the reply!
Yes, I’m pretty sure the softness goes hand in hand with the room temperature…
& good to know about the candelila wax! Mine is only a couple months old, so I guess I’m good! ^^
Love your blog, by the way!
xx
Karina
Thanks so much! Enjoy that beautiful weather—it’s a stunning 6°C here today 🙁 Sigh.
Good morning!
I tried one of your candelilla wax recipes a while ago, and while the lippy worked and kept my lips soft, the candelilla wax stench came through big time and is off putting. I figured you were the best person to ask this question to, does your candelilla wax have a very distinct scent too?
Just want to make sure mines normal before I give this recipe a go!
It doesn’t! It smells sort of plasticy, I guess, but it’s not noticeable in anything :/
Thanks Marie!
I love making lip balm and I truly love the small batch sizes these recipes make. This Chocolate Macadamia Nut lip balm does smell good enough to eat! I added a little Umber mica from TKB Trading for a delightful tint and I’m just thrilled with how it turned out. Another Humblebee & me success! Awesome!
Thanks so much, Jamie! I quickly learned small batches of lip balm are the way to go—my first batch seemed small enough when I made it, and then it filled something like 30 tins. WHOOPS!
This is lovely – however it made me realise that not all Macademia nut oil is equal. Mine is cosmetic grade and only a couple of months old – but it mostly smells (and tastes) of nothing. However the feeling on the lips is great so I love recipe. My first time using Babassu oil but I don’t think it will be my last as I’m not that fond of the smell of coconut oil and it seems like it might make a good substitute for it in other recipes?
Thanks for all you share with us Marie!
Aww, that’s so sad! I’m sorry to hear your macadamia nut oil is not pure olfactory magic. Booooo. Babassu is a great swap for coconut oil, but if it’s just the smell you don’t like, refined coconut oil sure is a lot cheaper than babassu 😛
Hi Marie, is there a reason we can’t use regular academia oil from the shops, that we have to use cosmetics grade.
Kim
Food grade products are typically much more expensive, and are often processed differently to prioritize flavour over cosmetic benefits. In this case, if you’re not worried about the additional cost, the food grade version should be fine as we want the toasted nuttiness that the cosmetic grade offers 🙂
Just wanted to let you know that I made this lip balm today and it is divine! I love the mellow cocoa, nutty scent and how it glides on the lips!
I’ve so glad, yay! Thanks for DIYing with me 🙂
I have macadamia nut butter as opposed to oil. Is there any way I could modify this recipe to use the butter? I’m assuming a straight substitution would not work due to the consistency difference. Thank you.
Macadamia nut butter is going to be a pseudo-butter, made from hydrogenated oil, so the consistency will likely be closer to the babassu oil than anything else in the formula. I’d try replacing the babassu oil with the macadamia nut butter, and then using another liquid oil you like instead of the macadamia nut oil 🙂 Happy making!
thank you for your suggestion! I will let you know how it goes. If I was going to try subbing in Macadamia butter for something else in a different recipe, would it be close to coconut oil? Just wondering what to play around with it seeing as I have it haha.
I don’t have macadamia butter, but what I’d recommend doing is feeling it, massaging it into your skin, etc. and seeing what it reminds you of. After that, make small batches of things and see what you think!
I made this lip balm because I wanted to try a vegan version. I didn´t have the babassu oil and macadamia nut oil so I totally changed the theme of the lip balm hehe… I used coconut oil and grape seed oil instead.
I love love love the end result on the lips! but I have to say that with these % of cocoa butter and candelilla wax it doesn´t hold for hot weather. I was a little surprised because candelilla wax has a higher hardness than beeswax, and your Naked Lip Balm (love!) has been holding up so much better in hot weather. I´ll be testing different % on candelilla wax to make it work.
Love your blog and your YouTube! 🙂
Hello
I have been reading most of your vegan lip formulations and I simply have to ask. What’s with the vitamin E? You seem to put a small amount of that in all of the formulations. What is the reason for that and can a use a different kind – E-Vitamin tochopherol or acetate for instance. Or maybe leave it out (depending on your reasons for adding it of course) :-).
Thank you for a very inspiring site!
All the best,
Kristin (all the way from Denmark 🙂 )
Hi Kristin! Hey! You’ll find the answers you’re looking for in the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia at https://www.humblebeeandme.com/diy-encyclopedia. Simply look up “Tocopherol (Vitamin E)”. Happy making!