As a Canadian it is my patriotic duty to try to incorporate maple syrup into as many things as I can manage. Today’s thing is lip balm, and it is lovely. This taffy coloured maple syrup lip balm is creamy, hydrating, and lightly maple scented. Please don’t eat it, though I wouldn’t blame you if you tried!
The base of this lip balm is made up of locally sourced golden honey scented beeswax, crazy fragrant virgin coconut oil, and cocoa butter (USA / Canada) so chocolatey scented that you are seriously tempted to chow down on a nugget (again, not recommended, but I wouldn’t blame you for trying!). There’s also some sweet almond oil (USA / Canada) to keep things soft and supple.
Because maple syrup is water soluble I’ve added a bit of soy lecithin to help things emulsify. As the mixture cools, we whisk, and as the lip balm thickens you’ll see the syrup begin to incorporate really nicely. I don’t recommend dropping the lecithin; it may work out at first, but chances are you’ll find the maple syrup starts to bead out of the lip balm as time goes by.
I used a dark maple syrup—grade B or C rather than grade A (though it looks like they are rebranding “grade B” as “grade A dark”, so that should work, too). Grade A sounds better from a marketing perspective, but the B & C grades are far more mapley and lovely. If you’re a maple fan, the darker grades are where it’s at! You can use grade A if that’s all you have, but if you love maple syrup and haven’t tried the dark stuff, I really recommend it. I got mine at the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto, but I’ve also seen it at Trader Joe’s in the USA and health food stores here in Canada, and on Amazon.
The final maple syrup lip balm is a bit too soft for a lip balm tube, so I’m loving it in this pretty (and since discontinued, though they still have them as of this writing) glass jar from New Directions. It’s also great in tins and other similar wide mouthed containers 🙂 Enjoy, fellow maple lovers!
Maple Syrup Lip Balm
5g | 0.17oz beeswax (USA / Canada)
4g | 0.14oz cocoa butter (USA / Canada)
3g | 0.1oz virgin coconut oil
4g | 0.14oz sweet almond oil (USA / Canada)2g | 0.07oz soy lecithin
4g | 0.14oz dark (grade B or C, or “grade A dark”) maple syrupWeigh the beeswax, cocoa butter (USA / Canada), coconut oil, sweet almond oil (USA / Canada), soy lecithin, and syrup out into a heat resistant glass measuring cup. Place the measuring cup in a small saucepan of barely simmering water to melt everything through.
Once everything has melted, remove the measuring cup from the water and dry it off. Begin whisking the mixture (I like the mini wire whisks for stuff like this since they aren’t so big that the entire recipe clumps up inside the whisk) and continue whisking as it cools. As it cools you’ll see everything come together into a creamy yellow pot of loveliness.
When the mixture is thoroughly emulsified and has cooled it to room temperature you can use a silicone spatula to scrape the lip balm into some wee jars or tins—the recipe makes about 20mL (2/3 oz) of lip balm, so I filled one 15mL (half ounce) glass jar and then a 5mL tin.
Don’t have some of the oils called for in this recipe? Read this for information on making substitutions!
Wondering why there isn’t a preservative in this, even though maple syrup contains some water? Read this!
Hi Marie!
I just love your lip balm recipes! This one looks absolutely scrumptious. Is the soy lecithin obligatory for the recipe to work? I don’t have it handy.
Hi Tanja! I don’t recommend dropping the lecithin; it may work out at first, but chances are you’ll find the maple syrup starts to bead out of the lip balm as time goes by.
Sounds so yummy! 😛 I just found maple syrup few years ago (it is not traditionally used product here in Finland), but now I use it whenever I can, because I quit using white sugar. I do not have lecithin right now, but need try this recipe sometimes.
Ooh, welcome to the wonderful world of maple syrup! It’s delicious over here 😀
Genius. Never thought to use lecithin to add something like maple syrup. I will be trying this also with honey.
Thanks, Patricia! Enjoy 🙂
Could you just add more beeswax or cocoa butter to make it firmer for a tube? This looks great. Also wondering if it can be made without the soy lecithin or if I can sub something else I might have on hand.
I kept it a bit softer so you can actually whisk the syrup in while the mixture is cool. In my experience it won’t thoroughly incorporate at higher temperatures, and I’ve found it to be pretty impossible to whisk solid things… so, I don’t recommend it.
I don’t recommend dropping the lecithin; it may work out at first, but chances are you’ll find the maple syrup starts to bead out of the lip balm as time goes by.
Marie
Instead of soy lecithin, could you use emulsifying wax?
Also if you just had to use a scent 🙂 which EOs/flavor oils would you use?
Thank you, Kris
I don’t think ewax would be a great alternative; it’s designed to incorporate small amounts of oil into large amounts of water, and this is exactly the opposite of that.
Honestly, the only scents that would go well with this would be artificial ones, so I wouldn’t. Something like maple or caramel, but ugg… they just taste/smell so chemically to me 😛
I love maple syrup a little too much. I think I would just constantly lick my lips!
Ditto! Too delicious not to eat.
There’s no such thing as loving maple syrup too much!
Would the maple syrup not increase bacteria growth? I know honey can have antibacterial properties which can make it safer for use in lip balm, but I don’t know if maple syrup does. It sounds so yummy though! Definitely want to make some 🙂
Both honey and maple syrup are water based. Water and oil don’t mix and will grow bacteria you won’t be able to see. You will need a preservative.
Yeah, it will—no more or less than honey (read this for more info). You could definitely add a preservative if you want 🙂
Hi is there any way to make this without soy lecithin? Love your blog btw!
I don’t recommend dropping the lecithin; it may work out at first, but chances are you’ll find the maple syrup starts to bead out of the lip balm as time goes by 🙂
Hi! This has nothing to do with this delicious-sounding lip balm, but I have spent so much time wondering and experimenting by myself that I thought I’d finally ask you (as you seem to really know your stuff).
So natural hair washing: You’ve told us that what you use is a soap followed by an acidic rinse, but in one of your older posts you’ve linked an article warning about just that (http://empoweredsustenance.com/no-poo-method-damages-hair/). Does it depend on the individual or have you learned something new since then? I’m in any case hoping to find a way to manage without a conditioner or a rinse, so for a while i tried shampooing with honey. During that period, which lasted for about two months, my scalp felt better than ever, but I missed feeling clean. I tried to google the logic of honey working as a cleanser, but couldn’t find anything, so I gave up. Now I miss the scalp-feeling 😀 So do you know on what grounds people recommend it as a shampoo (besides being antibacterial)? And what would happen if I just added some acid in homemade soap to delete the need for a rinse?
Your blog is so inspirational, helpful, well-written and versatile I think I’m permanently hooked 🙂
Hey Outi! Soap + acidic rinse is not the same thing as baking soda + acidic rinse, so the precautions in that article don’t apply 🙂 I’ve been washing my hair this way for about five years now and it’s still going strong and healthier than ever!
My concerns about adding acid to homemade soap are twofold; 1. Acid + base (NaOH) = baking soda/vinegar volcano, only worse. 2. You’re reacting off an undetermined about of the NaOH, resulting in a higher superfat in the soap, decreasing its shelf life and increasing the chances it’ll go rancid or potentially create puddles in your shower that can mold. I haven’t tried it, but those are my hypothetical musings.
Happy DIYing!
Hey!
Im back, I am SUPER close to getting all my ingredients on my list after evaluating each and trying to figure out which sellers have the best pricing etc. Anyway, the last thing I need is a digital gram scale I saw on Humblebee & me’s FB that you have been experimenting with new ones from Amazon. How are those coming, Marie?
Thanks so much!!!
Kathryn
Hey Kathyyn! I just wrote an FAQ on this 🙂 Those two scales have been working out really nicely, so they’re linked in that FAQ 🙂
yummm. I think i might have to make this for maple loving family 🙂
Do it! 😀
Great tutorial Marie. I have used honey knowing it was water soluble and haven’t had the chance to look further for a solution. Thank you!
Thanks, Pamela! Honey is lovely in lip balms, too 🙂
You briefly mentioned it in another comment but I don’t think it was addressed fully… this recipe combines oil and water and thus should incorporate preservative right? Why isn’t it included in the recipe? Thanks.
Because I’m human and I forgot? It’s there now 🙂
Hello Marie!
I just wanted to thank you for all your wonderful recipes!
My mom and I made this for ourselves yesterday and we are absolutely thrilled with the results; we will not be buying lip balm anymore!
Looking forward to your book release 🙂
YAY! Welcome to the world of never buying another tube of lip balm and having a tube in the pocket of every sweater and jacket you own 😉 Thanks so much for reading & DIYing with me!
i started to make my own hand balm-creme last year when i got a small batch of beeswax from a local beekeeper and found a basic recipe..i use beeswax,coconut oil,almond oil and then add a few drops of lavender and vanilla EO.Worked great for hands in winter and then i got a crazy idea to use a few old lip balm tubes(burts bees) that i just had not thrown away yet…and since then i make my own lip balm. I live in Europe right now,but i have family in the Toronto area and recently i visited and found the newdirections aromatics site and ordered a few basic butters and EO’s, wish i could get more stuff because the more i read about homemade cosmetics, the more i want to try,but natural beauty supplies are almost non existent here. i will certainly look up some more of your recipes.I love that you are Canadian, most sites i find are U.S. and i just don’t identify with their measurements and suppliers/stores
Thanks so much, Monika! I’m thrilled you’re enjoying diving into the super awesome world of DIY 🙂
Hi Marie,can I sub honey for the maple syrup for this recipe? I want to try it right now and hav everything except maple syrup (I have molasses). Thanks for your experiments and generosity with sharing your recipes!
Hey Jolene! You should be able to—let me know how it works out 🙂
Hi Marie, I tried (3/4 maple and 1/4 honey) and it turned out hard, unlike the texture I see in your photos. I will try it again and let yo know how it is (just with honey). Does the maple come through in the taste of your lip balm? Mine doesn’t. It could be that I added preservative?
Hey Jolene! Mine is a bit firmer than the photos show, but not hard at all. I don’t get a strong maple flavour—a bit of a scent and some sweetness is about the most of it 🙂
Hi Marie.
I finally took the plunge and bought a preservative only to be told it’s not suitable for lip balm. I’ve tried to find which ones are but still don’t know. Any suggestions? Thanks.
Jo
Hey Jo! From some new research of mine you don’t need a preservative for this lip balm as the sugar in the maple syrup is not available for bacteria to party in as it’s all tied up with the sugar. Scroll up to the recipe for a link to the full report on this if you’re interested 🙂
In general, lip balms don’t need preservatives as they usually don’t contain any water, so it’s not a worry.
Thanks Marie for answering both of my questions. Much appreciated.
Jo
Happy making!
Hi Marie.
My lip balm didn’t work out. Obviously I used a different sort of soy lecithin – the only one the health food shop had. It was granules and I hoped it would dissolve with heat and lots of stirring but it didn’t. So I’m assuming I should grind it to a powder next time before I use it.
Might help others not make the same mistake.
Thanks anyway! I hope to try it again with more success.
Jo
Aww, bummer 🙁 From my reading the granules are pretty stubborn when it comes to melting them down, so I’ve never bought ’em as the liquid variety has always served me well (and easily). Hopefully grinding up your granules will make it usable for you! Thanks for sharing 🙂
I would add a couple caps. Vit. E to the mixture as a preservative.
Vitamin E isn’t a preservative! It would help delay the onset of rancidity in the oils, though.
My husband sells local raw unfiltered honey. So I always have an endless supply in my house. So I took your recipe and made a honey version. Next time I am going to try it with some orange essential oil.
Ooooh, lucky you! Be careful with orange EO and use a steam distilled one so you can avoid the phototoxic effects 🙂
Hi Marie! Just wanted to let you know much fun your recipes are! Last night four of us had a DIY party and made this recipe (subbed sunflower lecithin, which was what I had on hand), black plum lipstick (gorgeous!), orange wax cleansing balm (another favorite and oft-repeated recipe), and fairy dust highlighting powder. We already have the Winterlight argan primrose serum (Youtube version) and it’s a general favorite. The monthly digest is beautiful (missed the January one, oops). Your generous sharing, careful research, and balanced approach are greatly appreciated! Thank you so much!
Thank you so much, Renee! That sounds like my kind of party—I hope there was some good bevvies, too 😉 I always love hearing about what recipes make it to people’s re-make lists—so often those recipes are different from the ones I return to often, and it really helps show me that not everybody loves everything, but there’s usually somebody out there who will really like something, no matter what it is!
Oooh, boy! I just picked up some sunflower lecithin tonight (after checking 6 stores unsuccessfully), and now all I need is beeswax, and I’ll be able to make this recipe, which I discovered almost a month ago but haven’t been able to make yet because I couldn’t find the ingredients. Homemade maple syrup, I’m finally going to use you for something other than candy. Yay!
I’ve been following your blog for about a month, and while spending Easter in my hometown I’ve been on a shopping mission to find a list of ingredients to make your silk/cedar and citrus/chamomile liquid shampoos and the 2-in-1 conditioner (I couldn’t find very many ingredients in the town I live in because it’s a small town with just one health food store, and it’s a tiny one). The only things I haven’t been able to find are phytokeratin, silk powder/peptides/amino acids (I know the first sometimes goes by another name, and that both are technically optional in their recipes, but I still would like to find them), and the three most important ones: emulsifying wax, the preservative (I’ve been mainly looking for liquid germall plus), and potassium hydroxide – I’ve been to 7 different natural foods stores and still haven’t been able to find any of these.
Hey Rachel! It sounds like you need to break down and shop online 😉 The ingredient selection is about 1000x better, and the prices cannot be beat. Unless you have a supplier like Lotion Crafter in your town, you will be seriously hobbled if you refuse to shop online 🙂
Teehee, that’s what I ended up doing – I made a big order from Amazon at the beginning of the month of everything else I needed for the silk/cedar and 2-in-1 (I didn’t get the few ingredients I didn’t have yet for the citrus/chamomile: benzoin, litsea cubeba, wheat gluten – that will be a project for a much later date), and all I need now is the BTMS-50 and phytokeratin, which I’m ordering from LotionCrafter today. (It’s not that I didn’t want to order anything online, I just wanted to get as much as I could from the local stores in case I managed to get everything for a recipe, so I wouldn’t have to wait on shipping, since I was only there for a week. 😉 Once I determined that I couldn’t get some things in stores, that was when I went searching online.)
I did have a question about the lip balm, though (in addition to “is using homemade syrup the best?” – yes, that was me): is there some way of stiffening it up just a tad to make it less likely to melt? The reason I ask is that we get some pretty hot summers here and I usually keep my lip balm in my pocket wherever I go (if I’m without it, my lips inevitably get drier than usual – go figure), so it can get pretty hot in there, especially when I’m out riding horses all day in 90F weather under a blazing sun, and I’m not too keen on the idea of using my dirty/dusty finger to spread it around if I notice my lips are dry and I don’t have water to wash my hands. I’ve had good success with Burt’s Bees staying nice and solid, though the cocoa butter Badger one that I used at one point melted in my pocket at room temperature. I know you mentioned somewhere (I forget if it was in a comment here or in a comment on the video) that adding additional beeswax can make it thicken up too much and thus make it rather difficult to get into a container once it’s at room temperature. That being the case, is it necessary to wait until it’s at room temperature to put it into the container, or can it be done when it’s still liquidy? Because if it can be done when still liquidy, would adding a tiny bit more wax keep it from melting quite as much?
If you’re looking for a lip balm that does better in hot weather, I’d recommend a different recipe: this one just isn’t going to work well for that purpose. That is both its strength (the texture) and its weakness (the texture, ha). This one would work, though!
Hi, love your blog. Can xanthem gum work instead of soy lethicin?
Hey, Elizabeth! Those two ingredients could hardly be more different if they tried, so that’s a definite no 🙂
Hi Marie, this sounds so great! I was wondering if you could use this recipe with honey replacing the maple syrup? Thanks
I can’t see why not 🙂 Happy making!
Hello Marie, just an FYI, I noticed today that the link at the end of this recipe (…read this) is no longer a lead to the article; perhaps it has been deleted, as I searched the site to no avail.
Aww, boo. I hate it when other website owners remove useful content 🙁
Hello! I was wondering if I could use camellia oil in place of the coconut oil? I know it will be more costly, but I live in New England and my lips get so dry with the winter. I have been purchasing a camellia lip balm for the past year and my lips have never felt better. If I you wouldn’t recommend using camellia oil in this recipe, do you have a beeswax free recipe that you would recommend? Also, I was wondering if I could put this lip balm in tubes instead of a pot? Thanks for all that you do!
Give this a read, it should answer your first question 🙂 If you search the blog for “vegan lip” you’ll find some beeswax free recipes, and no, this recipe does not do well in tubes—it is too soft. Happy making!
Hello. I’m excited to try your lip balm recipe, we are traveling to the Ukraine and I would like to make this and take thems as Canadian gifts! How long of a “shelf life” do you think they have?
I do apologize! I found it on the FAQ, thank you
Have you tried using maple cream (less water)?
No—I’m trying to keep the ingredients reasonably accessible, and even in Calgary maple cream is fairly hard to find—I brought mine back from Quebec. I’ve found maple syrup all over the world, though!
I just had to tell you how much I LOVE this recipe. I live in a small town in Ontario so I have easy access to local beeswax and maple syrup. This was the first time I tried lecithin (I was able to find sunflower at a local store). Right now I am looking out my window at freezing rain. Yesterday it was the wind. So not hard to see why I usually have extremely dry, chapped lips. But not this year! They are wrapped in the maple goodness of this recipe and have never felt better. Now I’m off to find one of your recipes to do the same thing for my poor hands. Any suggestions of one or two to try?
I am SO thrilled—WOO! Not so much about your weather, though, that sounds pretty unpleasant 😐 For super dry hands I’d probably try this for a lotion and this for an anhydrous thing, but there are certainly no shortage of recipes to try on my website as I also struggle with dry hands all winter long. Something that’s really helped me has been ensuring my hand washes are gentle and pH appropriate, like this 🙂
Thanks for the suggestions! I’ve been wanting to ask…is there somewhere to leave general comments that aren’t necessarily attached to a specific recipe? I have wanted to give a shout out to people like me who until recently didn’t have any experience or knowledge about some of the ingredients you use. A few months ago I was totally intimidated by words like cetyl alcohol, BTMS-50, and stearic acid and totally avoided those recipes. But you have given me the knowledge and confidence to try these and woo hoo!! Now I’m like…”ah yes, cetyl alcohol my old friend” haha. I have to admit that recipes like “mom’s creamsicle hand and body lotion” still scare me a bit, but at least I’m thinking about it, not just dismissing it totally :). Baby steps right? Thanks for doing what you do. Keep up the great work!
I did start up a forum once upon a time for more general discussion, but I rarely monitor it and it isn’t particularly active. That’s kind of what that was supposed to be, but I’m not sure that’s where it’s ended up, ha.
And YAY! I am so thrilled to hear you’re feeling more comfortable and more adventurous 😀 That is the best, and exactly what I’m hoping will happen for people as they learn and make things. Thank you so much for your kind words, for your support, and for being a Patron! I can’t wait to hear about what you create next 🙂
Hi Marie, I’m loving your website, its a hugely helpful source of info!
I am wanting to try and formulate a lip plumping balm using Hyaluronic acid, but as HA is water soluble I’ve been struggling to work out how to incorporate it.
Would lecithin work for that as it does in this recipe?
Thanks 🙂
If you want HA in lip products I’d look at this formulation and the hilurlip active I’ve used, which is precisely designed for the purpose. Happy making!
This is sooo yummy! I’ll have to find some darker maple syrup and see if I can’t get the scent to come through too.
OOoooh now you’ve got me thinking about making a lip scrub with maple sugar. SWOON.
Hello Marie, Loving your website, thank you so much for your work!
I noticed that the link is “dead” for why this product does not require a preservative (“Wondering why there isn’t a preservative in this, even though maple syrup contains some water? Read this!”). I would think that because of the sugar, this product would be prone to microbial spoilage, but I’m guessing the the water activity must be too low in this product to promote microbial growth – is that right?
Thank you!
Marie said in a comment (on 26th February 2016): “Because I’m human and I forgot” regarding the preservative.
https://www.youtube.com/user/mirkakaratza/videos
Hi Marie,
I know this blog post isn’t at all current but had a question regarding incorporating raw honey into lip balm. I unfortunately have not found any information out there regarding how to successfully do this despite several weeks of research, yet I see ‘honey’ listed in some lip balm ingredients. Obviously, there must be a way if it’s being done, unless people are flat out lying when they list ‘honey’ on their ingredients labels. I know that there is also powdered honey which is spray dried using maltodextrin, but this is not the type of honey I wish to use *bleh* even if it could be properly melted down into oils & stabilized for a longer period of time.
Would it be possible to use liquid sunflower lecithin to help keep honey incorporated into a lip balm? When I say ‘lip balm’, I mean a push up tube type lip balm, not a lip balm in a pot or tin. Or would the amount of lecithin required to do this, if possible, make the formula more of a goopy-type lip balm requiring finger application?
I signed up for the skin care course with Formula Botanica but haven’t gotten very far into the course yet, so have not yet run across this info in their course materials, if it is mentioned at all.
Thanks so much 🙂