Every Christmas my mum fills her slow cooker with cranberry juice, orange slices, a few fistfuls of whole spices, and some magic to create a wonderful warm Christmas punch. This spice infused body butter is inspired by that wonderful punch, and by how it made the house smell as it simmered away.
The base of this body butter is mostly unrefined shea butter (USA / Canada) and cocoa butter (USA / Canada). I’ve chosen deodorized unrefined shea butter (USA / Canada), but raw cocoa butter (USA / Canada) as the smell of chocolate seems to me to go hand in hand with the smell of Christmas. The two butters are softened up with a bit of sweet almond oil (USA / Canada), but if you don’t have that any relatively light carrier oil will do the trick.
Because the butter is solid at room temperature, we’ll have to do a warm infusion with the spices. It’s wonderfully simple—just combine all the dried spices, the butters, and the oils in a small saucepan, and heat over low heat or in a water bath for about half an hour. Once the oil is fragrant, strain out the spices and let the remaining infused butter cool.
The final butter smells slightly toasted with a hint of holiday spice.
Spice Infused Body Butter
20g | 0.7oz refined shea butter (USA / Canada)
20g | 0.7oz cocoa butter (USA / Canada)
20g | 0.7oz sweet almond oil (USA / Canada)
10g | 0.35oz beeswax (USA / Canada)1 whole star anise
3” cinnamon stick
4 whole cloves
4 cardamom pods, bruisedCombine the refined shea butter (USA / Canada), cocoa butter (USA / Canada), sweet almond oil (USA / Canada), beeswax (USA / Canada), and whole spices in a small saucepan or double boiler and heat over low heat for about half and hour to infuse.
Once the oil is fragrant, strain out the spices and pour the body butter into a tin. Chill in the fridge to set up.
Marie, could you share the punch receipe too please? It sounds delicious. I really enjoy your website.
Thank you,
I finally got the punch recipe up! It’s here 🙂
What a lovely idea! I’ve really been appreciating the beauty of herbs and spices lately, and finding new ways to use them, instead of automatically reaching for my essential oils. Thanks for the further inspiration.
Your photographs are so dreamy, too – I love the star anise floating atop the butters!
(And I think we need your mum’s recipe for the Christmas punch!)
I finally got the punch recipe up! It’s here 🙂
Thanks for another fun and easy Christmas gift idea. And I second the request for the punch recipe. In my family it is currant juice based gloggi but currant juice is hard to find in the US.
I finally got the punch recipe up! It’s here 🙂
Rediscovered your site after looking for some fun home made “girly stuff” and soaps that are appropriate for my almost teen age girls and myself.
Today we are making your spiced infused body butter. We are planning to make your dirt soap for a late Christmas present for their eight year old brother who LOVES dirt!
They have been requesting different ingredients and EO so they can make their own “treasures” for using and sharing. Thank you for offering my girls a much more fun alternative to store bought.
Hi Joyce! I’m so thrilled you and your girls are having fun with my recipes 🙂 Thanks so much for DIYing with me!
Not sure we did this exactly right. The smell is different. We decided it smells like browned butter with spices. I am thinking we either overheated it or used too many spices.
We shared the body butter with a few friends and while the smell is 50/50 liked but everyone loves the butter!
Thank you again.
Hi Joyce! It sounds like you probably did everything right 🙂 The scent you’ll get from a whole spice is definitely different than the essential oil—a sort of toasty scent (by my nose, at least).
Do you think you could do a short little post about how to use body butters and bars? A little confused how To use it if it’s hard at room temp, and also where to use it.
Thanks!
It’s hard at room temperature, but when you apply it to your skin, the heat from your skin should melt it, so you can use it like a lotion.
🙂
Hi Isabel! My body butters are formulated to melt on the skin, so with a bar you can just rub it across your skin and some will melt on, and then it can be massaged into the skin. For ones in tins you can scoop out bits of softer butters, or rub a bit onto your fingers and transfer that to your skin 🙂
I agree, we need Mom’s punch recipe and I love the idea of infusing the herbs and spices into the butters as well. I love using my essential oils but doing this just appeals to me in a way I can’t describe. It’s like getting extra oomph you don’t normally get any other way. 😀 I’m feeling all happy. It’s an extra day off for me and I’m getting ready to make lip balms and I’m trying not to break out the ingredients to make this too. LOL
I finally got the punch recipe up! It’s here 🙂
Hurray! I have all the ingredients! Making this tomorrow! If only I have as pretty a tin to put it in…
As many others, I have spent hours perusing your site. Thank you for all you do!
My wallet don’t thank you, but I do!
Thanks so much, Cat! Enjoy your new body butter & thanks for DIYing with me 🙂
You are so amazing! Great way to use spices and incorporate a family tradition and make it into your own!! Bonus points because I have been looking for ways to use my anise stars and cardamom pod, haven’t touched em yet! Great post thank you dear!!
Thanks so much, Colie! Enjoy 🙂
….you never added the beesawx, dear 😉
Oh dear—good catch! I’ve fixed it 🙂
The bees wax would be added with the rest of the oils and heated with the spices?
Yes, thank you—I’ve updated the instructions 🙂
Could I use cardamom EO instead of the pods? How much would I need?
You can, but it will give a very different result than the infused spice. I’d try adding ~4 drops after straining the infused oils 🙂
You could use cardamom EO, but not when the oils were heating, they’ll burn off. But you’d have to be careful not to use too much or it might be overpowering.
Cyn
🙂
Saw it, made it, love it. Thanks Marie 🙂
Woo! Thanks, Iryna!
Marie,
This probably seems like such a silly question, but I love your simple little labels. They seem so real and full of love. I would like to label my bottles for my family in the same way. Can you tell me how you make them? By the way, thank you for making such an awesome website. I just love it:)
Mandy, Kansas
Hi Mandy! The labels are just simple kraft printer labels from Amazon, and I wrote on them with a marker or black pen 🙂
Yummy, delicious! Marie, could you please help me find the recipe for making this butter into a solid massage bar? Could you please help me with the proportions of the ingredients? Do I keep the oils and just add more of the beeswax? If so, how much should I use? Thank you sooo much. Merry Christmas and keep up the great work!
Hi Manca! You will need more beeswax, but it’s hard to say how much without actually trying it. You might want to check out my guide to liquid oil and beeswax ratios here for some guidance. Thanks for reading!
Hi Marie,
I made this recipe exactly as you have it written down and found that the end result was rock hard instead of being malleable. I have to use a plastic spoon to dig it out of the tin. Any suggestions as to what I may have done wrong for it to turn out this way?
Thanks so much!!
Hi Jenn! Is it really cold where you are? And did you use a scale and do everything by weight? Do you trust your scale?
hi Marie,
Winter here in NY was brutally cold. I have a digital scale that i use all the time. It is calibrated.
It sounds like your ambient temperature is probably the culprit, then 🙂 If you gently re-melt the balm and add a wee bit more liquid oil that should solve the problem!
Hello Marie!
Your website and recipes are just wonderful!! So much to try and to know. My father has psoriasis and I found one interesting recipe (on other website) and I wanted to ask you for help. Here is the recipe:
40g Shea Butter
30g Cocoa Butter
20g Castor oil
30g Sweet Almond oil
10g Neem oil
1/4 tsp Vitamin E oil
5 drops Lavender essential oil
I wanted to add beeswax to make is more salve-like but I have not got any idea, which proportion to use! This will be my first try of making some home-made beauty things. If you can advise me on the beeswax amount, I would be very thankful!!
Hi Marina! That recipe looks very soft indeed 🙂 I’d check out this blog on beeswax to liquid oil ratios for some ideas 🙂 Remember to start with less than you need—you can always re-melt and add more!
What would happen if I replaced all the Shea butter with Cocoa butter? I don’t like the smell of Shea butter.
Read this 🙂 I really wouldn’t recommend the swap, and refined shea butter would solve the scent problem.
can i substitute ground cardamom? i don’t have any pods, but have everything else…
Yup, I’d just recommend putting everything in an infuser bag so you don’t have to deal with gritty body butter. Trying to strain hot body butter through a sieve is a great way to lose a lot of your body butter and end up with a big mess 🙂
Is it possible to make larger batches of this and maintain the quality? Do you have any tips on how to do this neatly?
Hey Katrina! Before you scale up the recipe, please make it at least once in the original amounts so you know if you like it and what you’re looking for. From there, because the main ingredients are measured in weight, it is very easy to scale up using simple multiplication.
Yes, I’m planning on trying this next weekend! I’m hoping to give this and your mediterranean wonderbalm as presents this year. Thank you so much for your recipes and feedback!
What lucky recipients! Happy making 😀
I love this as a gift idea, but the person I want to make it for prefers whipped body butters, could make this with the same ingredients but whip it? Or would I have to change the ratio of ingredients?
You’d have to use a completely different recipe—whipped body butters typically don’t have wax in them as the high melting point and waxy texture isn’t desirable. You can whip this, but it will not feel like a whipped body butter, it’ll just be a bit airier.
Thanks Marie! Would I be able to use your coco-cocoa whipped body butter recipe instead and replace the EO with the spices?
I’d probably use this base instead 🙂
I have the black cardamom does that make a difference
It will, but it’ll still be lovely 🙂
Hi, Marie. I just saw this post (I’ve only been reading your site for a couple years) and was intrigued. I’m surprised that these spices can be used on the skin. Especially cinnamon; aren’t many spices irritants? Or are they not irritating in certain small amounts? I’m someone who gets itchy from most scented things, so before I try this, I wanna make sure that I’m not gonna be in agony, frantically covering myself in cortisone, pramoxine, and diphenhydramine creams.
It otherwise sounds so totally cool that I wanna try it.
Thanks for a tip, and for everything you do! I think you’re a little doll.
This looks so good! What a fun gift to make for friends or enjoy yourself!
Thank you so much, Suzanne!
Thanks for sharing! How long is it good for?
How long will ______ last? What is its shelf life? 🙂
Hi Marie,
I have been doing your short online course and even though I didn’t make all the products, I still adore seeing how it is made. I also came across another video you did, the chai spice bath salts. In the comment section you wrote that you probably won’t make that formula again with the knowledge you now have.
I have also read up about skin irritants and lotions and and and… I am so disappointed as the chai spice bath salts sounds heavenly.
My question(after all that rambling, sorry, haha!). Would this body butter recipe not also be an irritant on the skin? I would LOVE to make it, but I am so sensitive.
Thanks in advance, I love your channel and blog!
Hey Seb! If I were to make this body butter today I would do what I did here and use a spice-y fragrance oil instead around 0.1% 🙂 Thanks for DIYing with me, and happy making!
Which is the capacity of the can?
Probably half an ounce or an ounce? It’s been 8 years, I can’t say for sure.