These beautiful and fun Popping Cocoa Coconut Bath Salts are the latest addition to this year’s Cocoa Coconut Holiday 2020 theme! And yes—they do pop! They pop and fizz and crackle like an indulgent magic trick when added to your bathwater. In addition to the popping fun, you’ll find your bathwater is transformed into a rich, velvety, fragrant milk bath. Let’s get cracking! (Sorry, I couldn’t resist!)

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The coolest part of these Popping Cocoa Coconut Bath Salts is most definitely the popping cocoa butter crystals that give this popping bath treat its name. You’ll be sitting in your bath, enjoying the lovely, silky water, and the entire tub will be crackling and popping like a big bowl of Rice Krispies 😄 I’ll admit I was a bit skeptical about just how “popping” the cocoa butter popping crystals would be, but they are very audibly crackly—check out the video to hear them pop away! I think kids would really enjoy the popping fun of these bath salts, too.

My cocoa butter popping crystals are from Brambleberry, but some Googling has taught me that they’re also a fairly common candy/cake decorating thing, making them a lot easier to get ahold of! A search for “popping cocoa butter” or “crackling cocoa butter” and the name of the country you live in should turn up several online shops that sell this ingredient—you might even get lucky and find them in a local specialty baking shop.

Our coconutty element is full-fat coconut milk powder, which smells softly of coconuts and contributes a beautiful milky richness to the bathwater. This is another ingredient that can easily be sourced from more grocery-type sources—mine is from Amazon. Combine that coconutty fragrant silkiness with Epsom and sea salts, and your skin will be feeling fantabulous after a soak with these bath salts.

I’ve amped up the scent with a bit of a beautiful Chocolate Ganache Fragrance Oil from Brambleberry—yum! You could definitely use cocoa absolute instead, or a coconut fragrance oil if the coconutty part of this theme appeals to your nose more than the chocolatey part (or blend the two!). A small amount of Polysorbate 80 ensures the fragrance solubilized safely into the bathwater, and some dendritic salt ensures these bath salts don’t turn into a bath brick when left on a shelf for a while.

Making these Popping Cocoa Coconut Bath Salts is really simple—massage everything together, spread the mixture out to dry for a few days, and then package ’em up and you’re done! Tubes of these bath salts make great gifts or a great little addition to (or reason for) a bit of self-care indulgence ❤️ Happy making!

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Popping Cocoa Coconut Bath Salts

10g | 10% dendritic salt (USA / Canada)
0.3g | 0.3% chocolatey fragrance oil or cocoa absolute
1g | 1% Polysorbate 80 (USA / Canada)

48.7g | 48.7% Epsom salt (USA / Canada)
20g | 20% fine sea salt (USA / Canada)
15g | 15% powdered coconut milk (USA / Canada)
5g | 5% cocoa butter popping crystals

Weigh the dendritic salt, fragrance, and Polysorbate 80 into a bowl. Massage everything together with gloved hands until the mixture is uniform.

Add the Epsom salts, sea salt, coconut milk powder, and cocoa butter popping crystals. Blend with gloved hands until uniform.

Spread the mixture out on a cookie sheet and leave it to dry for two days before packaging. I used some fun little test tubes with screw-top lids from YellowBee. To use, add a few tablespoons (or more—it’s up to you!) to a running bath and enjoy your soak (and listen to the popping)!

Shelf Life & Storage

Because this product 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!). 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 100g.
• To learn more about the ingredients used in this formulation, 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 try Natrasorb instead of dendritic salt, though I haven’t tested this to see if it seizes. This is the only substitution suggestion I have for dendritic salt. If you cannot get either you can use sea salt instead, but be aware that the mixture is likely to seize into a brick, though how quickly that happens will depend a lot on the environment you live it.
• If you’d like to change up the fragrance oil or essential oil, please research it to ensure it is bath safe and the usage level is appropriate.
• You could use Polysorbate 20 instead of Polysorbate 80.
• You could use a different milk powder instead of coconut milk powder.
• If you can’t get the cocoa butter popping crystals you could replace them with more salt. You could try using some cocoa butter dust, but keep in mind that it is unlikely to solubilize into your bath water (slippery/mess potential) and may melt into the salts. It’s a thing to try, but be aware I have not tested it.