Brace yourself for this Pemberley Conditioning Body Butter, as it is divine. This is a continuation of the Pemberley series I kicked off in February with my Pemberley Hand Lotion, featuring the same stunning scent blend and general theme of luxury. As I was trying to brainstorm different projects that would fit with the beautiful luxurious-ness of the theme I couldn’t help but think of a conditioning body butter, as every single one I’ve made has been the epitome of luxury. This one is no different—it leaves your skin feeling all kinds of soft and pampered, it smells divine, and it is the perfect companion to the hand lotion. Prepare to fall in love!
Want to watch this project instead of read it?
The bulk of this Pemberley Conditioning Body Butter is a new-to-me butter called murumuru butter. Made from the seeds of the murumuru palm (which is not the same thing as palm oil—”palms” are a very large category of plant), this butter is very decadent. It’s not as lightweight as mango butter, but significantly lighter than shea butter. I also find it to be softer than all the other butters I’ve worked with. It massages into the skin beautifully and has what I’d call an average absorption speed. This beauty of a butter forms a full 50% of this formula.
Our stunning conditioning note comes from th e inclusion of some BTMS-50, a lovely conditioning emulsifying wax. The primary reason I’ve included it in this body butter is for the utterly stunning skin feel it imparts—it is hard to adequately describe how amazing BTMS-50 makes body butters feel. I’d recommend reading some of the comments on last year’s Sugar Plum Conditioning Body Butter to see how it’s not just me—these conditioning body butters feel utterly amazeballs.
Beyond the beautiful conditioning goodness the BTMS-50 also brings some emulsifying power, so if you apply this body butter to damp skin after a bath or shower it will self-emulsify with the water left on your skin, instantly transforming into lotion, and that’s pretty dang cool.
Other goodies included in this body butter are some super lightweight, fast-absorbing camellia seed oil, and some ultra-silky cetyl alcohol. Our scent blend comes from two essential oils (bright cardamom and juicy pink grapefruit), warm and sweet benzoin resinoid, and oh-so fragrant and luxurious rose wax. I chose rose wax instead of rose essential oil because rose wax is a fraction of the price of rose essential oil, and because the maximum usage level for rose essential oil is 0.02% due to the high methyl eugenol content (methyl eugenol is a suspected carcinogen). If you wish to use rose essential oil instead, read the list of substitutions at the end of the recipe.
To keep things silky smooth we’ll be bringing the body butter to trace in an ice bath before chilling it in the fridge, and then allowing it to come to room temperature. I’ve found you really need to do both types of chilling in order to ensure the body butter doesn’t go mealy on you after a couple days.
This is what “trace” looks like.
Pouring after trace—you can see it has some viscosity to it.
The finished Pemberley Conditioning Body Butter is unbelievably smooth and soft, smells incredible, and leaves your skin feeling so touchable you might find yourself rubbing your hands together like a stereotypical movie villain every time you apply it. This is good stuff—I hope you love it.
Want to watch this project instead of read it?
Pemberley Conditioning Body Butter
Heated phase
2.5g | 10% BTMS-50 (USA / Canada)
1.125g | 4.5% cetyl alcohol (USA / Canada)
12.5g | 50% murumuru butter
8.025g | 32.1% camellia seed oil
0.25g | 1% rose waxCool down phase
0.25g | 1% pearl-coloured mica
0.125g | 0.5% Vitamin E MT-50 (USA / Canada)
0.05g | 0.2% cardamom essential oil
0.08g | 0.3% grapefruit essential oil
0.10g | 0.4% benzoin resinoidPrepare 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.
While the heated phase melts, prepare an ice bath. Take a bowl that is large enough to accommodate the container the heated phase is melting in, and fill it about halfway with ice cubes and cold water.
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.
Add the mica to the melted oils and then place the oil phase measuring cup into the ice bath and cool, stirring constantly, for about thirty seconds—until you start to notice some building viscosity. Remove the container from the water bath and add the remaining cool down ingredients. Stir to incorporate.
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 a bit longer.
Once you reach trace (this may happen without needing to use the ice bath after adding the full cool down phase) you can now pour the body butter into a 60mL/2oz tin and quickly transfer it to the fridge to set up.
When the butter has fully set up (give it an hour or two), remove it from the fridge to return to room temperature. That’s it! To use, smooth some body butter over bits of skin that need some extra love.
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 nicely fills a 30mL (1fl oz) tin.
- 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 could use BTMS-25 instead of BTMS-50, though this will result in less conditioning as 25 has half the amount of active conditioning ingredient as 50. Don’t use a non-cationic emulsifying wax instead—if you don’t have a cationic emulsifying wax I would recommend making a different body butter recipe that doesn’t hinge on the inclusion of a cationic emulsifying wax.
- You could use a different soft butter (cupuacu butter would be my next choice, followed by mango butter) instead of the murumuru butter.
- You can try cetearyl alcohol (USA / Canada) instead of cetyl alcohol, but this will give a different feel to the end product.
- You can substitute another lightweight oil like apricot kernel, grapeseed, or sunflower seed instead of camellia seed oil
- You can use a different essential oil blend if you prefer, just be sure to keep maximum usage rates in mind.
- The mica is optional; replace it with more liquid oil if you eliminate it.
- If you have rose essential oil, but no rose wax, I recommend adding 0.98% more murumuru butter and including 0.02% rose essential oil in the cool down phase.
Gifting Disclosure
The murumuru butter was gifted by Mystic Moments.
This looks glorious and I just used up my last body butter. We’ll be snowed in today so I good day to tinker and play 🙂
Wahoo! And oh my goodness, SNOW DAYS?! It’s… April! No no no, it’s much too late for that kind of nonsense 😐 (It snowed a couple days ago here, too, ha).
We got snow THIS MORNING.
(And I just got the e-mail notif this morning, BTW. Not sure if that’s a site bug or not. I select replies to my comment and instantly.)
It’s been wonderful. I made a grapefruit one and a ‘lush succulent’ one. They’re my go to ‘everything’ balm. Hair ends, cuticles, dry skin. This formula is AMAZING!
Blergh! We’ve been getting snow here, too—a pretty proper dump while I was away on the weekend (good timing on my part, ha) and continuing flurries. I’m not impressed!
I think the plug in that does the comment reply notifications is a bit gimpy :/ I’ll have to look into that at some point, blurgh.
What can we substitute the rose wax for?
Thanks Henriqueta
Hello Henriquera!
Marie posted this in her formula, “If you have rose essential oil, but no rose wax, I recommend adding 0.98% more murumuru butter and including 0.02% rose essential oil in the cool down phase.” same principle if you don’t have rose wax. Up your murumuru butter! Enjoy!
Wow, nice one!
I was very curious about how your Murmuru Butter looks because mine has a fast absorbency rate and it’s softer than Mango Butter, and they are very very different! Mine is a translucent white and when hard, it has such a funny & interesting shape and texture, kind of like frozen soft crates.
I will check if it is made from the seeds or from the fruit…
Hi Karina!
Alas, there is not yet a Murmuru Butter entry on the encylopedia! But yes, did a quick google search, and Murmuru Butter can be a wide array of colours depending on where and when it was harvested and processed. Mine is the exact same as Marie’s! Did you end up making the Pemberley Conditioning Body Butter?
It’s in the encyclopedia! You can find it here 🙂
I made this beautiful butter and it was perfect. But after a few days it’s gone grainy… What can I do to resolve this?
Howdy Angela!
Hopefully this article will help you out!
Mine is also hard (like cocoa butter) and translucent. I love it in body butter bars but wouldn’t use it for this recipe.
Interesting! Thank you for this—I’ve asked the supplier to look into why this difference occurs 🙂
This isn’t related to this post but have you worked with ceramide complex before? Btw, the four things restocked but now other things are sold outLotioncrafter sure is popular haha
Hiya Marie’s Fan!
I’ve not personally worked with it before, but I have read about it and it has me drooling for a few grams to play with! Have you used it? What’s it like?
No I have not worked with it before but it’s in one of The Acid Queen’s recipes:) I’m also very curious about it too!
Ohhh… ok! If you get your hands on it, I hope you’ll let me know your results!
I have! I’ve got something using the ceramide complex coming out in May 😀
Hi Marie,
If you had a word cloud of your recipes’ ingredients on the website, then your followers could see what ingredients you use over and over again and what would be worth purchasing.
I thought of this after seeing this recipe and rushing to add BTMS-50 to my cart over at Lotion Crafter, but then freezing with indecision about whether I should go ahead and shop around—but what else do I need???— or check out with only the BTMS.
I know it would be a lot of work to go back and word cloud your past 900+ recipes, so you could just word cloud future recipes.
You’d be doing your followers a huge favor! Thanks so much, Kate
I have exactly such a thing at the bottom of every single page, in the footer 🙂
You will also find that if you look up an ingredient in the encyclopedia there’s a list of formulas that call for it 🙂
Howdy Marie just diwnloaded the pdf file and for some reason the cool down phase was not on there just wanted to let you know and I even downloaded it again to recheck it’s like a page is missing somehow. Just givin ya a heads up there! I love the downloads you are fantastic keep up the good work girlfriend!!
I’m afraid that’s a third party plug in I have zero control over, sorry!
If I prefer an unscented product, will simply leaving out the essential oils work?
I’ve got an FAQ on this 🙂 Keep in mind that the rose wax also contributes to the scent.
I would love to make this butter into a cream (high summer temps melting butters and all)…Do you have any advice?
I’ve got an FAQ on butters/hot weathers/associated formulation challenges 🙂 Good luck and happy making!
just wondering if you have to use alcohols, aren’t they emulisifiers? is there a need for e-wax if there is no water in this recipe?
Hey Catherine! Have you read up on the ingredients in question in the encyclopedia? I am confident you’ll find all your answers in there 🙂 Happy making!
Please HELP,
I cant get to incorporate the BTMS50 in my body butter.
Once I remove the BTMS50 from heat source it starts to congeal back. I’m lost at what to do to get a smooth batter.
That’s odd indeed! Are you certain everything is fully melted? The BTMS-50 can be a bit stubborn in water baths in my experience. You’ll also want to make sure you’re stirring while the mixture is liquid and as it cools 🙂
Just an FYI that may confuse some people…you say put finished product into a 60 ml/2 oz tin, but the total ingredients adds up to 25 g and on the YouTube video you state to put in a 1 oz tin.
This looks lovely and I plan to try it with Cupuacu butter, since I don’t have murmuru.
Thank you for a lovely formula.
Sly
Hey Sly!
Thanks! How did it work out with the cupuacu butter??
Barb
I have really enjoyed watching your YouTube videos and am going to be trying out a couple of your recipes very soon (including this one) … I am wondering if this could be a whipped body butter or not?
Hey Marie! I have done this recipe and some days after, the oil just separated from the butter. Do you know what may have happened? D:
Check out this FAQ 🙂
Thoughts on adding arrowroot to cut the oil?
Have you made it as written yet? It’s really not an oily/greasy product at all 🙂
Combined this one with your frosted Cranberry Butter Balm and it turnt out great. It’s propably a bit more fragant than yours is and has a bit higher melting point (used more rose wax & grapefruit EO). I used home-made vanilla infused oil instead of benzoin resinoid. Your scent combination is genious! I followed your Butter Balm how to method too with fantastic results. It feels smooth and rich on skin with no grainyness. I could easily use this as beauty balm too. xx