I’ve been playing with lots of more complex DIYs lately, and I was itching to get back to something a bit simpler. Something made with wonderful plant-sourced oils and butters that are accented with essential oils. The sort of thing that isn’t intimidating, and really lets some of my favourite ingredients shine. That’s how we ended up here! This simple, rich Lavender Patchouli Body Butter combines a few lovely ingredients in carefully crafted amounts to create something indulgently creamy and moisturizing from some stuff you probably already have.
The bulk of this body butter is shea butter—I recommend using refined so the scent of the unrefined stuff doesn’t compete with your end product. At such a high usage rate you’re certain to notice that characteristic smokey scent when you’re done. The shea butter is our only hardening ingredient, so the end product melts beautifully and absorbs into the skin decadently, with no waxiness since there is no wax in the formula.
I’ve softened the shea butter with a few things. Lightweight apricot kernel oil and squalane not only help soften the shea and smooth it out, but they also help speed up the absorption speed. Shea butter is a pretty darn heavy, slow absorbing, slightly sticky butter, so pairing it with some lightweight, silky oils makes a ton of sense.
The beautiful custardy-yellow hue comes from the inclusion of some rich soy lecithin. Lecithin is a humectant, antioxidant, and emollient—a wonderful thing to include in our concoctions! It helps make this body butter extra moisturizing, which is never a bad thing, and I find it lends a beautiful richness to concoctions that is quite unique.
Our essential oil blend is a soft mixture of lavender, peppermint, and dark patchouli. I’ve kept the dark patchouli amount very low as it still dominates the blend, but it is mellowed and sweetened by the lavender, and brightened with the peppermint. You certainly don’t have to use this blend if you don’t want to—if you hate patchouli you can simply drop it, or you can use something else all together.
We’ll be making this body butter in a few stages to reduce the chances of the shea butter going grainy on us (my first go at this recipe dates to February and it’s still silky smooth!). Step one is just barely melting the shea and lecithin together. From there we’ll jump start the cooling process by stirring in the liquid oils at room temperature, and then cool the whole lot to trace in an ice bath, stirring in the cool down phase ingredients as we go. The trace trick is one I’ve learned as part of my coursework for Formula Botanica’s Diploma in Organic Skincare Formulation. Many of you have been asking and no… I’m still not done, so I still don’t have a full review for you. The not-done thing is 100% my fault as I’ve been bogged down with so many other things, but I fully intend to finish it, and I will be at their sold-out annual conference in London this coming November!
Ok—let’s get our crunchy on with this richly moisturizing body butter!
Lavender Patchouli Body Butter
Heated Phase
26g | 65%Â refined shea butter (USA / Canada)
4g | 10% soy lecithin (liquid)Post-Heat Phase
5.62g | 14.05%Â apricot kernel oil (USA / Canada)
4g | 10%Â olive squalane (USA / Canada)Cool Down Phase
0.2g | 0.50%Â Vitamin E MT-50 (USA / Canada)
0.08g | 0.20%Â lavender essential oil
0.08g | 0.20%Â peppermint (Mentha Piperita) essential oil
0.02g | 0.05%Â dark patchouli essential oilPrepare 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 glass measuring cup. Place the measuring cup in your prepared water bath to melt everything through. We’re aiming to just melt everything through, so keep a close eye on the mixture and remove it from the heat as soon as it has liquified.
While the heated phase is melting, weigh the cool down phase ingredients into a small beaker or dish. I chose a lightweight beaker so I could use a scale precise to 0.01g—heavier containers are too much for my precise scale to handle.
Prepare an ice bath in a bowl that will accommodate your heated measuring cup—you’ll want a handful of ice cubes and some cold water.
Once the heated phase ingredients have melted remove the measuring cup from the hot water bath and add the post-heated phase ingredients—keeping these cool simply helps the whole mixture cool faster. Up next, place the whole container in the ice bath. Stir constantly with a flexible silicone spatula, being sure to scrape down the sides frequently. After a minute, stir in the cool down phase ingredients.
Continue stirring the mixture in the ice bath until you reach “trace”—the mixture should have enough viscosity that a small amount drizzled over the surface of the mixture leaves a “trace” for an instant. If you’re a soap maker you’ll be familiar with this—we’re looking for a rather light trace. Refer to the video to see it in action! If in doubt, stir and chill longer, giving it more time to obviously thicken up, otherwise it may not set up properly.
At that point pour the mixture into a 60mL/2oz tin. I used this 50g plastic jar from YellowBee. Leave it to set up for at least an hour before using—it should appear solid. The set-up time will vary depending on ambient temperature (if you’re somewhere quite hot, popping it in the fridge would be a good idea).
Shelf Life & Storage
Because this salve 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 & Notes
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 40g (1.41oz).
- The structure of this recipe comes entirely from shea butter, which melts around 37°C/98°F. Given it is diluted with some liquid oils, the melting point of this butter will be lower than that. If you live somewhere with ambient temperature close to 37°C/98°F, this recipe may not be for you. It was approximately 27°C/80°F in my house the day I made this for the blog, and that was fine.
- You can use unrefined shea if you prefer. You could also try mango butter or cupuacu butter, though this will impact the consistency; they have similar consistencies, but given the butter is the only thickening agent in this recipe, changing it will impact the end product.
- You can use sunflower lecithin in place of soy, but I would recommend staying with liquid lecithin rather than trying to use the solid granules.
- A different lightweight oil like sweet almond, grapeseed, or sunflower seed will work well instead of apricot kernel oil and/or squalane.
- You can use a different blend of essential oils
Please ensure that your squalene is plant-sourced and not obtained from shark livers. Lots of soapers and makers of beauty products won’t use unresponsibly-sourced products or animal products and they have a right to know what and where squalene comes from. Thank you.
Your comment made me realize I hadn’t polished up the ingredients list yet—it was still in shorthand form from copying it from my notes. It now specifies olive squalane. That said—I have never found shark derived squalane for sale from reputable DIY supply shops. My awareness of the possible shark source comes almost entirely from said shops telling me their product is not shark derived. I think it would be pretty much impossible to accidentally buy shark derived squalane if you’re shopping from reputable suppliers, especially given that shark derived squalane is likely to be far more expensive given the added difficulty in acquiring it as compared to a plant source. It’s always good to be careful and research ingredients, but the likelihood of accidentally purchasing non-plant-derived squalane seems very, very low from everything I’ve seen.
Thanks for looking into this!
Hi Marie, love your recipes. This one sounds lovely! I’m wondering if it’s possible to make this a whipped body butter like the citrus one you last did?
The ratios are about right for a whipped body butter; I haven’t tried it, but there’s a decent chance it’ll work. Give it a go and let me know what you think!
I love when Marie goes back to basics!! This sounds divine!
Thanks so much, Keriann!
I discovered the ‘only just melting Shea butter to avoid graininess trick’ by accident some time ago and it works a treat. I usually found that anything above 40degC, would cause graininess (I use unrefined shea butter, if that makes a difference). The only issue I have with it, is that it is time consuming in the large batch sizes I make!!! Also, I’m curious, do you think products made using this method of melting the shea butter would pass stability testing? I’m familiar with the rapid cooling process once everything is combined, but lot of other well-respected folk in the DIY skincare business, suggest tempering the shea butter before using it, or doing it in situ whilst making, to prevent graininess. Butters can be a real pain in the butt
I agree about the pain in the butt thing, ha! I do have some butters that I made in early February using the ice bath trace method that are still smooth, which is promising. This post is also a really good read!
Where do you get your lecithin? Mine is from bulkapothequary and I love it but find when I heat it is smells bad. There is a chemical reaction (I can’t remember) that I read about on Point of Interest so I generally incorporate mine in the cooler phase (maybe not quite cooldown, it depends on the project…). Do you find this to be an issue? I’m currently loving a cuticle/nail oil that is jojoba, lecithin and some lanolin here I heated the lanolin in the jojoba and mixed in the lecithinwhen it had started to cool a bit. Thanks so much!
Mine is from Saffire Blue, but don’t buy from them. I looked at a paper titled “Preferential Degradation of Noncholine Phosphatides in Soybean Lecithin by Thermalization” and from that paper, the heat and time required for breakdown is far above and beyond what we’re working with. “At
175°C~ the heating time required to degrade the noncholine phosphatides was between 30 and 60 min.” We’re obviously nowhere close to 175°C for this sort of thing with the water bath. I hope that helps!
I ALWAYS look forward to reading/viewing your posts and seem to pick up tidbits that aren’t even the main focus. Your comment about shea butter sometimes becoming granular helps me so much as this has been a problem with some of my body butters and now I know the culprit! Same with the smokey smell. I have a hard time picking EO’s to help disguise that smokiness as I don’t like it, although it disappears quickly when applied. Thanks for your EXCELLENT videos!!!
Pat
Yay! I hope this can help your body butters going forward 🙂 That tip might just be the best thing I’ve learned from Formula Botanica so far!
Yes , also I am adding lecithin in Cool phase please explain this Marie. And can I substitute olive squalane for any oil else. Thanks
I looked at a paper titled “Preferential Degradation of Noncholine Phosphatides in Soybean Lecithin by Thermalization” and from that paper, the heat and time required for breakdown is far above and beyond what we’re working with. “At
175°C~ the heating time required to degrade the noncholine phosphatides was between 30 and 60 min.” We’re obviously nowhere close to 175°C for this sort of thing with the water bath. I hope that helps!
Please read the substitutions list 🙂
Just made a bottle last night. I had all the ingredients. This post was perfect timing, I had just run out of my last batch of body butter.
Woo! Enjoy 🙂
Is it the lecithin that keeps the grease level down? Normally, anything I make in this fashion has that greasy after feel, but this has more of the powdery after feel and I really like that.
Lecithin is pretty heavy and sticky, so I suspect it would be the lighter oils helping to tone it down compared to what you’re used to 🙂
Hey Marie thanks so much for another great recepie. Are you going to record this too so we can watch you make it
No; at this point in time if a recipe is released without a video it will not be getting one. Over 80% of my recipes have videos now, though, so that’s pretty good! And I do try to make sure the ones that don’t get videos are on the simpler side, or the techniques have been covered in other videos.
Hi Marie: I sent you a message on Facebook about 1-2 weeks ago but don’t know if you saw it. I’m new to all of this and I’ve seen various additions to you BB recipes such as adding Lecithin in this one, isopropyl myristate in Whipped Shea Citrus BB, BTMS-5/Cetyl alcohol/ benzoin resinoid in your Conditioning Earl Grey BB, and benzoin retinoid in your Vanilla Spice Whipped BB. Not wanting to spend a fortune as I learn, can you either explain why these are added into some and not others … or to possibly give us a Master suggested recipe? Thanks in advance.
I’d recommend looking up all these ingredients in the Encyclopedia—I’m working to add as many ingredients as possible so one can easily look things up and learn what they do and why they’re used 🙂
I substituted the shea butter for mango butter and used Apricot Kernel oil instead of sunflower. Just waiting for it to set and see what it is like.
I look forward to hearing how it goes!
I know that I am a little late to the game commenting, but when you mention under the shelf life that they need to be kept “cool”, is there a specific temperature that you’re referring to? Or only worry about the temperature if it’s really hot out? For example, if I’m doing a craft show for 8 hours in the middle of July, should I worry about my body butters spoiling? Thanks in advance for any help/clarification!
Love your work. But I’d like to ask if I could omit the oils and just use a butter. How will that change the end product?