I am absolutely in love with cocoa butter (USA / Canada) these days. It just smells so good, and it melts at just the right temperature, and it’s all smooth and soft (unlike some butters which are sticky on the skin). Best of all, it leaves you smelling of a beautiful, high-end chocolate bar, and that is just fantastic. And… you can use it to make the easiest body butter bars ever. Seriously.
This body butter bar is so easy that it’s almost cheating to call it a recipe. On the other hand, though, it is so wonderful that I’ll never be without one, and they make fantastic Christmas gifts.
I ended up going with a measuring cup that was just barely too big since it was such a close fit.
Because cocoa butter (USA / Canada) melts at 34°C, and body temperature is 37°C, these melt beautifully in your hands, but don’t even soften anywhere else (that’s another awesome thing about cocoa butter (USA / Canada)—it doesn’t really have a soft stage, just super hard and melted). If you leave them out in the Australian sun you will definitely end up with a cocoa scented puddle, but if you store the bar much like you would a chocolate bar, you’ll be fine.
The Easiest Body Butter Bars Ever
40g | 1.41oz cocoa butter (USA / Canada)
A few drops Vitamin E MT-50 (USA / Canada) (optional)1 small, flat 60g/2oz tin (for storage)
1 measuring cup that can sit inside the tin (for your mould)Weigh the cocoa butter (USA / Canada) into a small saucepan and melt it over medium heat. Stir in the Vitamin E MT-50 (USA / Canada), if you’re using it.
Pour the cocoa butter (USA / Canada) into the measuring cup and let it set up in the fridge. Once it’s set up, you may have to dip the measuring cup in some hot water for a second or two (no longer, though!) to free it from the mould.
Store the body bar in the larger tin. To use, tip out the entire bar and turn it in your hands. You’ll eventually end up with a rounded saucer-like object. If it ever gets too small, just melt it down with some more cocoa butter (USA / Canada) and start over.
Once I tipped the bar out of the measuring cup I had to turn it my hands a few times to get it to fit into the tin.
Sometimes the simplest recipes are the best! I have made several body butter bars myself, but usually I add several other ingredients to the cocoa butter and the bars become to soft or too messy. I guess I like the idea of using cocoa butter and nothing else!
My thoughts exactly, though I do sometimes think this is too darn easy to be an actual recipe, haha. We’ll call it more of a tip than a recipe… 😛
add some beeswax to offset the soft or messy. The wax will firm it up. I make what I call Nut butter bars with beeswax all the time. beeswax, cocoa butter, shea butter, butters of sorts, oils, lanolins, glycerins, etc………………been work on the ultimate bee bars..Special bee Bars : )
A classic tip, thanks!
I just made a body butter with cocoa butter as the main ingredients and it was quite luxurious. I can’t wait to try this, many lotion bar recipes tend to be too sticky or melt easily. Thanks for another wonderful recipe!
Mmmm, cocoa butter 🙂 And I totally agree with you on the sticky lotion bars thing—they can end up being pretty greasy and gross when they’re made with the wrong combo of oils.
Where do you buy your cocoa butter? I am looking for it raw, but am having a hard time finding it…
If you scroll up to the big grey box above the comments there’s a bunch of links to all my favourite suppliers 🙂
I just made this using jojoba oil instead of vitamin E, and mango butter instead of cocoa. Did not work. 🙁
Was very mushy once it solidified. Am melting them back down and adding beeswax…hopefully they’ll firm up!
Well… no offence… but you didn’t really make this—you replaced every single ingredient, lol. In this case, cocoa butter is muuuucho harder than mango butter, so swapping mango butter for cocoa butter is a bit like using canola oil instead of butter in a cookie recipe. I’ve written an entire blog on carrier oil substitutions that should help with your future substitutions and DIY projects 🙂 And enjoy your all-new, self-formulated body butter bars!
Thanks for reading & DIYing with me!
I made a couple of these bars so far and I like them, also they’re just as easy as you say however…they’re a little melty for me. I thought maybe I would try to add some beeswax to firm them up. The first batch worked and I ended up with a solid bar I am happy with. The next I tried with adding two drops of lavender essential oil and I’ve had cracked bars ever since.
Do you think it’s possible to have a scented bar with cocoa butter and beeswax for firming?
Thank you!
I just found your massage bar recipe and see that it has all the ingredients I am trying to use!
Could the reason mine are cracking be because I am not using equal parts of both cocoa butter and beeswax? Or could it be because I am putting it in the freezer to harden? I was using much less beeswax than cocoa butter. I am also using a few drops of vitamin e oil.
Thanks!
That massage bar recipe is the other one I’d recommend to you, but seriously, do not leave out the liquid oil. Maybe reduce it a little, but make the recipe as is first. Once you get past about 1/3 beeswax, you end up with a rather awful final product in my experience. Too much beeswax makes for an end product that is really sticky and skids across the skin (imagine your skin on hot leather in the summer… kind of like that—not pleasant at all!).
What do you mean by “cracking”? Can you send me a photo? Are they too hard and cracking because of that? Are they soft and sort of crumbling around the edges? Is it just the top?
It definitely is—I actually have a recipe for these (more or less) coming out on December 16th. You must live somewhere really warm if 34°C is too low a melting point for you!
Why did you choose to pour the mixture into a measuring cup to harden, instead of just pouring it into the container?
Well, I tried this initially, but if you look closely you’ll see the tin I used has a wee rim around the edge that rolls in—the bar wasn’t going anywhere with that there. So then I tried to pry it out, but that resulted in a tin of random chunks and shards of cocoa butter… so yeah. Measuring cup it was. You could use your container if it has no lip at the top, though!
Hi Marie,
I made these last night and love it!! However I think i need to solidify it a bit as it melt immediately on my skins and since I’m living in Indonesia it can get a little oily for me. Would adding beeswax firm it up a little ? or should I perhaps follow the other recipe (Perfect Body Butter) instead ?
Sorry for the many questions.
Thanks
Hi Mayasia! If you’re living in toasty Indonesia I can see that something that melts at 34°C would probably be a bit soft for you 🙂 I’d recommend trying the perfect body butter bars or the body truffles, both of which use some beeswax, which will help them maintain their hardness in warmer temperatures. Have fun & thanks for DIYing with me!
Interesting! I’ve always wanted to know what “body butter bars” are… and I’d love to smell like high end chocolate…lol..Yum! Thx for sharing 🙂
🙂 Enjoy!
What if I do this same thing but melt the cocoa butter and pour it straight into a lip balm tube? yea or nay? you once told me that beeswax is what makes lip balm effective/last on lips and not to go under 20% but I am still so curious… SOLID CUPUACU IN A LIP TUBE!
Hi Emily! You can definitely do this, but if it’s for body application I’d recommend a deodorant tube or something larger for more efficient application 🙂
Hi Marie,
as always, I am really enjoying your posts. I sometimes have a problem with my body bars cracking. Ingredients were 75g raw cocoa butter, 25g coconut oil. They were fine when they came out of the freezer but started cracking into pieces the next day. Do you have any clue why that happened?
Hmm. Since this isn’t a recipe of mine I haven’t tried it or done any work on it, but my guess is that it’s not terribly structurally sound at room temperature. Coconut oil melts to a liquid pretty quickly around 24°C, and I’ve found cocoa butter to be a fairly weak ingredient as far as rendering things solid goes. I’d recommend taking a look at my perfect body butter bars—they use beeswax to counter the softness of coconut oil 🙂
Thank you for your reply Marie. Strangely, I have never had that problem if the body bar also contained shea butter. Will definitely try to add some beeswax, I will have to play with the formula..
That could be because shea butter has a melting point of 37°C, and it’s a stiffer, yet still soft fat. It’ll stay solid under most circumstances, and it’s too soft to crack. That’s my hypothesis, at least 🙂
I think you are right. I tried it yesterday with sheabutter and no cracking in sight. I also added some beeswax to the formula. Thanks for your advice.
Wonderful! Enjoy your bars 🙂
my recipi…
mix 200 gr Shea with 200 gr Olive Oil or another.
Thanks for sharing 🙂 It is worth noting for others who haven’t tried it, though—this won’t make anything close to a bar, it’ll be very liquidy 🙂
Nice recipe :). I think it would be good to mention not add the vitamin E once the mixture had cooled down a bit.
If the vitamin E gets put into the mixture when it is still hot it will destroy the properties of the vitamin E.
Good point, thanks Iris!
Hello,
I want to do this, but am not so keen on smelling like chocolate 😉 I have a bar that is white in colour (that might be because of the melting & cooling?) and it doesn’t smell. It is an old bar though as it stayed in a cupboard unused for a couple of years. Do you have tips on making this without the chocolate smell? I know that adding essential oils will not do the trick 😉
Deodorized cocoa butter!
My mum somehow got cocoa butter from a colleague! It’s been lying around in the cupboard but then I made this
Beautiful! Enjoy 🙂