Mint and foot cream = a fabulous match. Mint and chocolate = also fabulous. Mint + chocolate + foot cream = amazingness! Decadent, refreshing, tingly, tootsie-treating goodness, all bundled up in a rich and silky White Chocolate Peppermint Foot Cream. This one has a double hit of peppermint, fragrant cocoa butter, soothing aloe vera, and a hefty dose of humectants to treat the feet of all your lucky giftees!

Want to watch this project instead of reading it?

Watch Now

The water phase of this cream features refreshing peppermint hydrosol and soothing aloe vera juice—those two ingredients make up 50% of our formulation. Up next; a hefty dose of humectants. I went with a blend of vegetable glycerin and sodium lactate. Both are highly effective and inexpensive moisturizers. I’ve been experimenting with higher doses of glycerin in lotions and I love it!

Our oil phase is mostly ultra fragrant, mouth-wateringly delicious cocoa butter (of course!). I’ve also included some silky cetyl alcohol to further thicken the cream and add some slip. Some dimethicone 350 adds even more slip and also reduces any tackiness that hefty dose of glycerin can add (I say “can” because I find perceptions of tackiness are highly personal—the dimethicone definitely reduces tackiness in everything and anything, but you might not find the formulation tacky enough to need it).

I’ve kept the cool down phase simple; tingly, fresh peppermint essential oil and our preservative. That’s it. Easy peasy. If you’ve made a few batches of lotion before you’ll find this stuff comes together nice and fast, and I think you’ll really like it. Happy making!

Want to watch this project instead of reading it?

Watch Now

White Chocolate Peppermint Foot Cream

Heated water phase
13.5g | 13.5% distilled water
30g | 30% peppermint hydrosol
20g | 20% aloe vera juice
10g | 10% vegetable glycerine (USA / Canada)
5g | 5% sodium lactate (USA / Canada)

Heated oil phase
4g | 4% Polawax (USA / Canada)
10g | 10% cocoa butter (USA / Canada)
4g | 4% dimethicone 350 (USA / Canada)
2g | 2% cetyl alcohol (USA / Canada)

Cool down phase
1g | 1% peppermint (Mentha Piperita) essential oil
0.5g | 0.5% Liquid Germall Plus™ (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 wide, flat-bottomed sauté pan.

Weigh the heated water phase into a small heat-resistant glass measuring cup. Weigh the entire lot (measuring cup + ingredients) and note that weight for use later. Weigh the heated oil phase into a second heat-resistant glass measuring cup. Place both measuring cups in your prepared water bath to melt everything through.

After about 20–30 minutes the oil part should be completely melted and the water part should be thoroughly dissolved. Remove the water bath from the heat and weigh it. Add enough hot distilled water to bring the weight back up to what it was before heating, and then pour the water part into the oil part. Stir with a flexible silicone spatula to incorporate.

Grab your immersion blender and begin blending the cream, starting with short bursts so the still-very-liquid cream doesn’t whirl up and spray everywhere. Blend for about a minute, leave to cool for ten, blend for another minute or two, and repeat this blend-cool-blend cycle until the outside of the glass measuring cup is barely warm to the touch and the cream is thick and creamy.

When the cream is cool it’s time to incorporate our cool down ingredients. Because cool down ingredients are typically present at very low amounts you’ll need to use an accurate scale—preferably one accurate to 0.01g. As these more accurate scales tend to have fairly low (100–200g) maximum weights you won’t be able to put the entire batch of cream on that scale without blowing it out. So—grab a smaller dish. Add a scoop or two of cream, and then weigh the cool down ingredients into that, using the more accurate scale. Stir to thoroughly incorporate, and then stir all of that back into the master batch of cream. Doing it this way minimizes the amount of cool down ingredients lost to the secondary container.

Once you’ve incorporated your cool down phase and the cream is fully at room temperature you’re ready to package it up! I used a 100mL (3.3fl oz) white plastic screw-top jar from YellowBee. To use, massage as much cream as you like into your feet as needed—I like to apply it right after a bath before bed, and put on a pair of socks before climbing between the sheets.

Shelf Life & Storage

Because this cream contains water, you must include a broad-spectrum preservative to ward off microbial growth. This is non-optional. Even with a preservative this project may eventually spoil as our kitchens are not sterile laboratories, so in the event you notice any change in colour, scent, or texture, chuck it out and make a fresh batch.

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 recipe, 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 can replace the peppermint hydrosol with more distilled water and increase the peppermint essential oil to 1.5%, removing 0.5% water to make room for it.
• You can replace the aloe vera juice with more distilled water. You could also try witch hazel in its place for some astringency.
• Propanediol 1,3 would make a good alternative for the sodium lactate and/or glycerin.
• You could use emulsifying wax NF instead of Polawax.
• Please don’t replace the cocoa butter!
• If you want an alternative for the dimethicone 350:
  • You could use a natural dimethicone alternative, like LuxGlide N350 (USA / Canada)
  • You could use a rich liquid oil that your skin loves (oat oil comes to mind!)
• You can try cetearyl alcohol or stearic acid instead of cetyl alcohol; this will impact the end skin feel, making the final product less slippy.
• Please don’t swap out the peppermint essential oil. According to Tisserand the maximum usage rate for peppermint essential oil is 5.4%, so if you want to use more than 1% you can (I probably wouldn’t go past 2%), just be sure to adjust the amount of distilled water to make room for it.
• If you really want to ramp up the chocolate scent try adding 0.5% cocoa absolute to the cool down phase, removing 0.5% from the water to make room for it.
• If you’re like to use a different preservative, please review this page.