It’s been positively ages since I made a whipped body butter—since late 2020! This one was inspired by some gifted ingredients from Lavida Oils; their cupuaçu butter is utterly lovely and has re-ignited my long-standing love for this uniquely lovely butter. Cupuaçu butter is rich and smooth, but I don’t find it to be particularly greasy. It leaves my skin feeling soft and nourished, with a rather novel silicone-like finish. I immediately wanted to combine it with the oils from Lavida to create a beautiful tropical-inspired body butter, and that’s what we are doing today!

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The backbone of this Whipped Cupuaçu Passionfruit Body Butter is silky, creamy cupuaçu butter. Cupuaçu butter is a soft butter, but a fairly firm soft butter as far as soft butters go. At 40% it’s enough to make this whipped body butter firm enough to whip. In comparison, this formulation uses a blend of mango and shea butters that totals 53.4% of the formulation, and this one contains 63% mango butter.

That base of cupuaçu butter is then softened with three different liquid emollients. Passionfruit oil is definitely the star liquid oil in this whipped body butter; it’s lightweight, smooth, and an all-around gorgeous emollient. I could’ve used just passionfruit oil for the liquids in this formulation, but I wanted to keep the cost down as it’s definitely a luxury oil. If you’re feeling quite indulgent you could do that, though!

Liquid emollient #2 is Coco-Caprylate, a lightweight plant ester that helps keep this Whipped Cupuaçu Passionfruit Body Butter from feeling too greasy or oily. If you don’t have it you could easily replace it with a different lightweight ester (isoamyl laurate would be lovely; Isopropyl Myristate would also work!). And lastly, some fractionated coconut oil (or medium chain triglycerides) gets us all the way to “just soft enough” 😀

Spring 2023: Want to learn more about formulating emulsions? Formula Botanica is currently offering a free formulation masterclass that will teach you how to make a botanical face cream; you can sign up here 🙂

Those four ingredients are it for the heated phase (and for 99.5% of the formulation). If you live somewhere quite a bit warmer than I do you may need to increase the percentage of cupuaçu butter and decrease the percentage of liquids. If you keep your home quite a lot cooler than mine (approximately 20°C/68°F) you may need to do the opposite. To learn more about this please read this post: Super Simple Whipped Shea Butter.

This batch is a fairly small 30g (1.06oz), and the whipping method is matched to this batch size. If you scale up the batch you’ll need to switch to a whipping method that includes more cooling so the butter doesn’t get too warm as it’s whipped. Please read this post for more information on that: Autumn Spice Whipped Body Butter.

Let’s get whippy!

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Relevant links & further reading

• Cupuacu Butter in the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia
• Passionfruit Oil in the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia
• Coco-Caprylate in the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia
• Fractionated coconut oil in the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia
• Medium chain triglycerides in the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia
• Tocopherol (Vitamin E) in the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia
• Preservatives + Shelf Life in the Humblebee & Me FAQ
• Why is my body butter melting?
• Why is my body butter greasy?
• Why is my body butter grainy?
• More whipped body butters:
  • Autumn Spice Whipped Body Butter
  • Chocolate Cherry Whipped Body Butter
  • Cranberry Orange Whipped Body Butter
  • Rosé Whipped Body Butter

Whipped Cupuaçu Passionfruit Body Butter

Heated phase
8g | 40% cupuaçu butter
5g | 25% passionfruit oil
3g | 15% coco-caprylate (USA / Canada / UK / EU / NZ)
3.9g | 19.5% fractionated coconut oil

Cool down phase
0.1g | 0.5% Vitamin E MT-50 (USA / Canada)

Prepare 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 bowl that you can heat and whip the butter in later. Place the bowl in your prepared water bath to melt everything through.

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 dishtowel. Place the bowl in the freezer for 10 minutes.

Grab your electric beaters; you’ll want the attachments you’d use to cream butter and sugar together if you were making cookies or a cake (the whisk attachment will work if yours is sturdy; mine is pretty squishy). Depending on the size of your bowl you might just need one beater rather than both of them. Whip away for about three minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Whip until the body butter is light (both in consistency and colour) and makes quite soft, marshmallowy folds when you stir it—though take care not to over-whip it, as the heat from the whipping can cause the butter to melt a wee bit and collapse.

If you’re making this for the first time, let the body butter to come fully to room temperature by leaving it overnight.

Once it’s settled at room temperature, give it a poke and make sure you’re still happy with the consistency—that it hasn’t melted into a puddle or anything unpleasant (If you live somewhere quite hot, please read this). If it’s too hard, whip in a bit more liquid oil and wait. If it’s too soft, add more cupuaçu butter, re-melt, and re-whip. If you make any changes, make sure you wait to ensure it stays soft at least overnight before packaging it up. If you’re happy with the consistency, we can incorporate our cool down phase and move on!

To weigh out the cool down phase you’ll need to use an accurate scale; preferably a scale accurate to 0.01g. As these more accurate scales tend to have fairly low (100–200g) maximum weights you likely won’t be able to put the entire batch of body butter on that scale without blowing it out (if you can, go for it!). So—grab a smaller dish. Add a scoop or two of body butter, and then weigh the cool down ingredients into that, using the more accurate scale. Stir to thoroughly incorporate, and then transfer that back into the master batch of body butter. Whip that all together.

Once the body butter is all fluffy and lovely, gently spoon (or pipe) it into a wide-mouthed jar. I used a 30mL (1fl oz) frosted glass jar with an aluminum cap from Voyageur Soap and Candle Co. (gifted).

To use, massage into skin that could use some pampering and enjoy.

Make sure you store the body butter in a temperature somewhat similar to the one in which it was made—it will readily melt if exposed to high temperatures, and it won’t have that lovely whippy consistency when it re-solidifies.

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 formulation 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 20g. If you scale this formulation up, you will need to use a different whipping method. Please read this to learn more.
• 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.
• I do not recommend swapping out the cupuaçu butter. If you do you will need to re-develop the formulation.
• You can substitute another lightweight oil like sweet almond, grapeseed, or sunflower seed for the oils in this formulation.
• You could use a different lightweight ester (C12-15 Alkyl Benzoate, Neossance® Hemisqualane, isoamyl laurate, etc.) instead of the coco caprylate, or you could replace it with a lightweight liquid oil.
• If you’d like to incorporate an essential oil, please read this.