Today we’re making a fluffy pot of oh-so-happy mango scented whippy bath time fun in the form of an emulsified Mango Mango Whipped Sugar Scrub. This soft scrub is packed with sparkly, scrubby sugar, decadent mango scent, and skin-loving goodness. It comes together wonderfully quickly, and is the perfect thing to perk up your bathroom and possibly even get yourself feeling amped up for shorts season!
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This scrub has two parts—the base, and the sugar. The bulk of the base is inexpensive, lightweight fractionated coconut oil. You could easily use a different lightweight, inexpensive oil, or something you’ve got on hand that should be used sooner rather than later to ensure it doesn’t go rancid sitting in the pantry. I intentionally did not include mango butter in this formula because it seems silly to wash something like mango butter down the drain when the significantly less expensive fractionated coconut oil works just as well—you wouldn’t even notice mango butter in this recipe!
I’ve combined Polawax and Polysorbate 80 to create the emulsified part of the sugar scrub; the part that lets you happily scrub away in the bath and then easily rinse those oils down the drain. Not only does this make for better skin rinse-off, but it also makes you significantly less likely to end up with a concussion in your local ER smelling of mangoes (your tub will rinse out well so you shouldn’t slip on an oil slick).
The whole lot is thickened up with some fluffy cetearyl alcohol, coloured orange with some vibrant sea buckthorn fruit oil, and mouth-wateringly scented with the beautiful natural mango fragrance oil from Essential Wholesale. The scrubbiness comes from sugar, but you can choose to blend sugar and salt, or use all salt if that’s what you have. I did run out of sugar part way through the last batch of this and a blend of the two has worked nicely!
When you’re making the base it can be tempting to leave it to sit overnight before adding the sugar and whipping, but I know from experience that you won’t want to do that. Leaving it sit undisturbed results in a much harder top forming, and no amount of whipping got those hard bits to properly re-incorporate. Instead, you’ll want to stir the mixture a few times as it cools—you could speed things along with an ice bath or some freezer bursts, or just place it somewhere in your home you are likely to pass it every twenty minutes or so, allowing you to give it a quick stir as you go about your business. Once it’s fairly viscous you’re ready to whip!
The final scrub is fluffy, fun, and smells fantabulous. Highly recommended!
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Mango Mango Whipped Sugar Scrub
Heated phase
5g | 5% Polawax (USA / Canada)
4g | 4% Polysorbate 80 (USA / Canada)
27g | 27% fractionated coconut oil
0.5g | 0.50% sea buckthorn fruit oil
12.25g | 12.25% cetearyl alcohol (USA / Canada)Cool down phase
50g | 50% white sugar (USA / Canada)
0.25g | 0.25% Vitamin E MT-50 (USA / Canada)
1g | 1% natural mango fragrance 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 medium sized, deep, heat-resistant mixing bowl. Place the bowl in your prepared water bath to melt everything through.
Once the mixture has melted, remove it from the heat and leave it to cool, stirring occasionally. You can speed this along by using an ice bath if you wish. The aim is to not allow the mixture to cool completely undisturbed, otherwise a harder layer will form on the surface and you won’t get a thorough, even blend.
When the melted mixture is mostly cool and is quite viscous, but not fully solid, add the sugar, vitamin E, and mango fragrance, and whip using electric beaters until light and fluffy.
Gently spoon into a jar—I used a 100g single wall white jar from YellowBee for my 100g batch, and that worked well. To use, portion out a small amount of scrub into a shower-safe container, and take that container into the shower or bath with you. Massage small amounts of the scrub into your skin and rinse off. Enjoy your lovely soft, exfoliated skin!
Shelf Life & Storage
Because this scrub does not contain any water, 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!). Be sure to keep it dry to ensure it lasts as long as possible—don’t let any water get into the container and it should easily last a year. I highly recommend portioning out the amount you want to use into a small shower-safe container for use so you are never taking the master batch into the bath/shower, where it is very likely to become contaminated with water as you’ll be dipping into it with wet hands. If you plan on giving this scrub away, please include 0.5% Liquid Germall Plus™ (USA / Canada).
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 100g.
- 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.
- You can use a different complete emulsifying wax instead of Polawax.
- Olivem 300 or Cromollient SCE will work instead of Polysorbate 80, but Polysorbate 80 is cheaper.
- You can use a different inexpensive lightweight carrier oil instead of fractionated coconut oil.
- You can use a different orange oil (like buriti or sea buckthorn seed oil) instead of the sea buckthorn fruit oil, or you can replace it with more fractionated coconut oil (this will eliminate the orange colour).
- If you replace the sea buckthorn fruit oil with a non-orange oil you can try using 0.75% non-orange oil and 0.25% orange mica to keep the colour.
- You could try a blend of stearic acid and cetyl alcohol instead of the cetearyl alcohol. I’d probably start with 50/50 and see how that works.
- You can use a different fragrance if you prefer.
- You could use salt instead of sugar.
Gifting Disclosure
The natural mango fragrance oil was gifted by Essential Wholesale. The sea buckthorn fruit oil was gifted by SIBU. The plastic jar was gifted by YellowBee.
Thank you ! This recipe sounds great!
In your list of substitutions you said: “You can use a different orange oil (like buriti or sea buckthorn seed oil) instead of the sea buckthorn fruit oil, or you can replace it with more apricot kernel oil (this will eliminate the orange colour).
“replace it with more apricot kernel oil” I don’t see any apricot kernel oil in this recipe. Was it accidentally omitted? Or where is the original apricot oil? I’m sorry if I’m just not seeing it, but wanted to figure that out before I tried to make the recipe. Thanks for your help!
Good evening Stewart!
I have let Marie know about this typo! I beleive she meant to say “replace with more fractionated coconut oil”. Thanks for catching that!
Thank you!
Hi Marie, I would like to create this recipe and give it away so if I have to use liquid germ all plus then when do I use? Since this preservative is only soluble in water and there isn’t any water in this recipe, I was just wondering when I could include it.
Hello Nikita!
This is an awesome question! When I go to make this scrub (I will only make it with the mango fragrance oil which I have yet to source, but already have my recipe formulated out!), I will be adding my Liquid Germall Plus during the cool down phase. When you make it for yourself, you know you’ll be portioning out what you need before you step in the shower. When you gift it, not everyone will pay attention to your instructions! So they will probably keep the scrub in the shower without a thought about keeping water out. So if they reach in with wet fingers, the scrub will mix with the water, and your preservative will do its job! Hope this helps!
Hi Marie – could we use Red Turkey oil as an emulsifier here? Also, why fractionated coconut oil, please? Thanks, you’re our do-it-yourself goddess. ~ Maria.
Good morning Maria!
You could use Turkey Red Oil in this recipe, but I’d strongly not suggest it. It is just not as effective as Polysorbate 80 and in my opinion, I find it leaves a gross film on the skin when used.
This is a wash off product, so using something on the expensive side just doesn’t make a lot of sense as it will just be going down the drain! Feel free to swap the fractionated coconut oil for another light weight oil like… virgin coconut oil to mix with that lovely mango scent!
I’m so making this for the summer!
Hello El!
I KNOW! I can’t wait to make the Body Lotion once I get my fingers on the natural mango fragrance oil! Have you tried it?
Not yet as I live in Spain but I’m travelling to the US this month so I’ll try to buy some stuff online and bring it home with me 🙂
Hi Marie,
My sea buckhorn is orange bit the color went away once I mixed it with the other ingredients, would you have an idea why? Thx!
I’m betting you’re using the seed oil rather than the fruit oil, which isn’t nearly as orange. It’s also possible yours just isn’t as orange as mine—natural ingredients can vary in colour quite a lot between sources/harvests/etc. 🙂
Why is the Polysorbate 80 needed if Polawax is a complete emulsifying wax?
Good morning Good Taters!
It took me a moment to find the right post where Marie has spoken why she prefers the blend, “Our cleansing comes from a combination of Polawax and Polysorbate 80. I find I like a blend of a solid and a liquid emulsifier/solubilizer in cleansing balms, though you could adjust the recipe to use all of one or the other if you prefer.” This is from the Soothing Cleansing Balm. In this post she has described why she uses this combination, “I’ve combined Polawax and Polysorbate 80 to create the emulsified part of the sugar scrub; the part that lets you happily scrub away in the bath and then easily rinse those oils down the drain.”
In my own making, I have found that using Polysorbate 80 in cleansing balms and in anhydrous scrubs is similar to backup singers in a band. You’ve got Tina Turner with her amazing talent, but her songs have more oomph with her backup singers. Hopefully this explanation helps a little!
So I’m super excited; I had made one of Marie’s sugar scrub recipes that’s similar to this and loved it, so this time I halved the percentages of Polawax, Polysorbate 80, and cetearyl alcohol (making up the percentages with more FCO), and it thinned it out enough to put it into a tottle – a perfect squeezable sugar scrub for the shower (put in 1% phenonip just because it’ll stay in the shower). Absolutely love it. Thanks again for these amazing recipes!
Ahhh, so cool! Thank you so much for sharing, Betsy! I just might have to try your modification—it sounds a bit like a product I remember being quite fond of as a teenager. It was scented like green apples and was advertised as being “warming” on application but I can’t say I ever noticed that, ha.
Ha, I thought about going similarly teenager-y and making it with some pink mica and cherry fragrance oil (minus the mystery warming effect)!
OOooh that sounds lovely! I’ve been working on a shimmery pink hand wash lately and I’m loving how it looks in the bottle 😀
Can i use SCI at 6 – 7% (making this a foaming scrub) and leave out Polysorbate 80?
You can try it, but I think you will find it will not foam at all; there’s so much fat/oil in this scrub that the lather will very likely be entirely suppressed. Happy making!
For the carrier oil, can you use RBD coconut oil instead of fractionated coconut? Thanks!
I don’t recommend it as RBD coconut oil is solid while fractionated coconut oil is not. Please see the suggested substitutions list 🙂 Happy making!
Love your enthusiasm and your wonderful recipes! I made your whipped sugar scrub and mailed it to a friend. It arrived liquified. I live in the southeastern USA where heat and humidity can play havoc on just about anything. The heat index can reach over 100 degrees in the sweltering summers. After resting in a cool place, the scrub solidified and was well received. Is there anything I can substitute that will keep the product from melting if exposed to heat?
Thank you!
Hey Margaret! I’ve written an FAQ on this 🙂 Happy making!
Hi, could this be used as a face scrub? Would it be too greasy?
Hey Jan! This would be far too aggressive to use as a face scrub. I have several face scrub/polish formulas, I’d recommend using one of those instead!
Thank you for your excellent explanation! I hope you do travel south for research and development purposes. Please let me know if you come this way!
Will do—here’s hoping!
Hi can I remove the stearin acid completely if I’m going to use Olive Emulsifying wax (Inci Cetearyl Olivate and Sorbitan). It says on there website that there’s No need for co-emulsifiers or stabilizers. Thanks
Hey! There is no stearic acid in this formula? That said, when a supplier says there’s no need for co-emulsifiers or stabilizers, they’re talking about when you’re creating an emulsion with that emulsifier, and this is not an emulsion 🙂
How can I figure out an 8oz formula?
Please refer to the first point in the Substitutions list 🙂