This snowflake theme has images of pearly white things and glitter dancing in my brain, so sugar scrub nuggets—with lovely bits of sparkly sugar—were an absolute must. These adorable little nuggets are brilliant for gifting—pop ’em in a cute cellophane bag with a nice bit of white ribbon for an adorable stocking stuffer, or perhaps as part of a larger snowflake themed gift set (heavens knows we’ll have more than enough recipes for that by December!). You’re guaranteed to make the day of anyone who needs a bit of time to chill in the bath and just needs a bit of an excuse to pamper themselves—and what’s a better excuse than some homemade Snowflake Emulsified Scrub Nuggets?!
After using my Pumpkin Spice Scrub Nuggets for a couple weeks I decided to tweak the base for these ones to make them a bit firmer, and with a slightly higher melting point. We don’t want them to be too hard—once we get there they don’t melt and emulsify well, and become a drain clogging risk. However, if they’re too soft they can be hard to gift and if they’re inadvertently stored near a heating vent they may cease to become scrub nuggets and instead become scrub puddles 😂
Maria sent in a recipe request with a link to some adorable little cube-shaped sugar scrubs, and I loved the look, so I attempted to emulate it. Emphasis on “attempted”, haha. I poured the batter into a flat bar mould and then sliced it into wee “cubes”, but the viscosity of the batter at the time of pouring (viscous enough to keep the sugar in suspension) meant the top of the bar was far from smooth, giving these a much more… rustic… look. You’re definitely welcome to use any kind of mould you want, just be sure to keep the nuggets to no larger than a single use size (about 20g), because once they’re wet they either need to be finished or thrown away.
In keeping with our Snowflake theme these scrubs are unscented, with the emphasis being placed on sparkle instead! I’ve added a sprinkle of sparkle sugar and a touch of silver glitter to the top and bottom of these nuggets to make ’em sparkle like a snowflake. Both are technically optional as they are really just decorative (though the sparkle sugar will add some more scrubby action), but I love the added glitz ❄️
If you want to scale the recipe to make more, simply multiply up the weights of everything. The amounts of sparkle sugar and glitter you’ll need will vary with the surface area of your mould(s), so that’s a bit harder to predict, but you won’t need all that much of either since it’s just garnish. Now—let’s get scrubby!
Snowflake Emulsified Scrub Nuggets
5g | 0.18oz Polawax (USA / Canada)
4g | 0.14oz Polysorbate 80 (USA / Canada)
23g | 0.81oz rice bran oil
13g | 0.46oz stearic acid (USA / Canada / UK)
4g | 0.14oz cetyl alcohol (USA / Canada)0.25g | 2 drops Vitamin E MT-50 (USA / Canada)
35g | 1.23oz white sugar (USA / Canada)Coarse, large-grain “sparkle sugar”
Silver glitterPrepare 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 polawax, polysorbate 80, rice bran oil, stearic acid, and cetyl alcohol into a small heat-resistant glass measuring cup. Place the measuring cup in your prepared water bath to melt everything through.
While the mixture melts, prepare your mould by sprinkling some glitter and sparkle sugar across the bottom of it.
Once everything has melted through, remove the measuring cup from the heat, dry it off, and stir it occasionally as it cools (an ice bath will help speed this along, though you’ll have to stir constantly if you go that route lest it set up solid before you can pour it!). As it cools, prepare your mould by putting it on a plate so you can easily carry it to the fridge (this is especially important for floppy silicone moulds!).
When the mixture has a bit of viscosity to it, stir in the vitamin E and granulated sugar. Keep stirring occasionally as the mixture cools (again, you can use an ice bath here, just be sure to stir constantly), until it has enough viscosity that the sugar doesn’t immediately settle out. At that point, pour it into your mould, sprinkle the top of the scrub nuggets with more glitter and sparkle sugar, and then quickly transfer the mould to your fridge to chill.
After about twenty minutes the nuggets should be all set up, though this will depend on the size of each nugget. Once they’ve set up, release them from the mould, taking care to handle them as little as possible—they melt quite readily on contact with skin!
Because these scrub nuggets do not contain any water, they 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. Each nugget is a single-use thing, so choose your mould size accordingly. Once the nugget gets wet, use it all up in one go!
Substitutions
- You can use Emulsifying Wax NF instead of Polawax. You could also use BTMS-50, but it’s definitely more expensive than the other two options and you’ll just be washing it down the drain, so it seems like a waste to use it here.
- You can use Olivem300 (NOT 1000!) instead of Polysorbate 80
- You can use a different lightweight, inexpensive liquid carrier oil instead of the rice bran oil (think safflower, sunflower, canola, grapeseed, sweet almond, fractionated coconut, etc.)
- You can use salt instead of sugar
- You can probably use more stearic acid instead of the cetyl alcohol, but not the other way around. The melting point of these little nuggets is quite carefully balanced, so messing with these ingredients can really throw off the entire recipe.
- The glitter and sparkle sugar are decorative, so they’re optional
How do these stay hard? Excuse my ignorance *Hide* but when I think emulsion, I think cream or lotion…
Just look at the ingredients—lots of hard things, and no water (which is mostly what makes lotions and creams the opposite of hard). The emulsion happens with your bath water at the moment of use 🙂
These look like bar cookies. Coconut bar cookies. I think these will make happy inclusions in gift baskets this year!
That’s a pretty way to think about it, thanks! Enjoy 😀
These look great Marie, I am doing homemade christmas gifts this year, christmas cakes, soap, bath bombs, body butter etc. So these will be an ideal addition. Great! Keep going 🙂
WOo! DIY Christmases are the best 🙂 I’m having so much fun planning what I’ll be making for people 😀
These look scrumptious! What is the purpose of the polysorbate80? I would like to keep the ingredients all natural so is it possible to leave it out? Thanks 🙂
It is part of the emulsifying system; please refer to the list of substitutions in the recipe for alternatives 🙂
I made these Marie and they turned out beautiful. I have to admit I used fragrance oil, in a tropical scent. I love the fact that it doesn’t have a ton of ingredients in it, just simple inexpensive ones. I’m back to using polysorbate these days. I find OlivEM has a smell I don’t like and is about a thousand times more expensive than plain old polysorbate which in my opinion works better.
Yay! I’m so glad you’re enjoying the recipe, and your customization sounds decadent 😀 Thanks for sharing and DIYing with me!
Are the stearic acid and cetyl alcohol included for solidifying the nuggets? If so, could both be replaced with a butter like mango or cupuacu? I’m sure I’d have to play around with the percentage to get it just right. Was just checking to see if there was any other function for those ingredients that I might miss out on by replacing with a solidifying butter. Thank you!!
Well, yes—mostly. They also contribute silkiness and creaminess. I would not recommend swapping them out for a softer butter as you simply will not get the concentration of hardening ingredients required; this is like trying to sweeten a cake with carrot juice when the recipe called for sugar. Yes, carrot juice does have some sugar in it, but in order to get the same amount of sugar you’d have to use so much carrot juice that it would seriously compromise the rest of the recipe (you’d probably make carrot soup instead of cake haha). You refer to them as “solidifying” butters, but they aren’t. Even cocoa butter isn’t great for hardening, and it’s much harder than the two you mentioned—you need much more potent thickeners/hardeners to create something solid when you’ve got a variety of ingredients (especially when some are liquid). Hope that helps!
I make a very hard salve with mango, cupuacu and cocoa butter and 3 different oils. No waxes at all. I guess I’ll really only know what you mean by Cocoa butter not being solidyifing if I try it! Will report back! Thanks Marie!
Happy experimenting 🙂
Hi! I absolutely love making your recipes and I am excited to try this one! Question – I thought I had Olivem300 but it turns out I have Turkey Red Oil. Will that work as a substitute? Thanks.
It will, yup! Happy making 🙂
Hi! I made this, it’s great! I didn’t have cetyl, so I used 1% behenyl and 3% cocoa butter, and it’s awesome. I had a hard time getting it to the mold with the salt staying put so I just scooped it in and then sprinkled salt on top (I didn’t have sugar). I am not getting anything nearly as white as yours, though! But they’re beautiful, I used sprinkles that are silver balls, and then just added a bit of salt to the top for the sparkly look.yay! Thank you for sharing this! My girls and I will have fun making these presents, lots to measure and cut, plus, sparkles!! I was also imagining a bit of menthol melted into this mix, but I don’t have any on hand. Thanks!
OOoh, that all sounds lovely! Thanks so much for sharing and for DIYing with me 🙂
Hi and Happy New Year …! I made these and a few other of the Snowflake Collection for a Birthday Gift and of course a bit of the leftovers I kept ..and I must say they are so beautiful..and I just love them ! And my daughter said these were the best sugar scrub cubes she has ever had!! Thank you once again..Your are a big hit !!
I’m so glad! Thank you so much for sharing and for DIYing with me 🙂
I am making a gift basket with a lavender theme and made a lavender version of this recipe with lavender buds in the bottom of the mold instead of glitter and then pressed more lavender buds into the other side.
Ooooh, your variation sounds so beautiful! 😀
Can you use salt instead of sugar?
Yup!
Love this idea! Thank you! I live in very hot climate. Would you recommend to add some wax to the formula to make the nuggets harder?
I’d probably choose something like stearic acid or cetyl alcohol over a wax—I’ve found waxes in scrubs like this tend to leave the skin feeling quite sticky 🙂 Happy making!
Hi Marie i have olivem 1000 but you say not to use it, can i ask why?
thanks
Hey! You’ll find the answers you’re looking for in the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia at https://www.humblebeeandme.com/diy-encyclopedia. Simply look up the ingredients in question to learn about why they are used in formulas, substitutions, what they do, usage rates, and more. Happy making!
Hi Marie
Thank you for sharing this. I tried this recipe 2 ways- one with white sugar and other with rose powder and sugar and both turned out beautiful. I want to try this again but I don’t want cubes. I would prefer a normal emulsified scrub creamy texture. I do not want to add any butter. Should I try by increasing the oil percentage ? Any advise you can give. Thank you.
I want to make a bit more than just small batch and trying to break this down into percentages so I can resize. Would you say that the sugar is about 35% of the total of the other ingredients? The way I see calculating this, is to get the % of all the ingredients, except the sugar. That’s not a problem. But what I don’t really know is the percent of sugar. When I run the numbers, with all the ingredients, the sugar is about 41%. Does that sound right?