Mango Whipped Body Butter Recipe

If you read my post "What Are You Putting On Your Skin?" then you already know why you'd want to consider making your own body butter to use in place of commercial lotions. I already shared a simple recipe for Shea Butter Balm & Shea Butter Cream which requires no heat and very little prep time. Today I'm sharing the my current favorite body butter recipe, which is the result of testing a lot of different concoctions over the past few months. It takes a little longer to make, but it's my favorite finished butter so far for both face and body. I really like the consistency of it and what it does for our skin. I like to whip up a big batch and keep the extra on hand for later. Ready?

Mango Whipped Body Butter Recipe

• 1/2 cup mango butter*
• 1/4 cup coconut oil*
•  1/4 cup shea butter*
• 1/4 cup sunflower oil* OR 1/8 cup sunflower oil + 1/8 cup jojoba oil)
• 1/2 tsp Vitamin E
• 1 TBSP arrow root powder (optional- this helps it absorb into the skin quicker to lessen the greasy feeling)
• Essential oils of choice. My favorite combination for a face & body moisturizer is equal parts of Gentle Baby, Frankincense & Lavender. I add 10 drops of each oil to 3 oz Mango Whipped Body Butter.

Preparation: 

1. Melt mango butter in double boiler (or in a Pyrex, sitting inside a pot of boiling water) over medium heat. After it's melted, lower the heat as needed to get the temperature at or below 175 degrees.
   
2. After the temperature is 175 degrees or below, add coconut oil and shea butter, then heat the mixture for 20 minutes on low heat. 
3. Seperately combine sunflower oil, vitamin E & arrow root powder and set aside. 
4. After the stovetop mixture has heated 20 minutes, remove it from heat and let it sit counter-top until cool to the touch (up to 45 minutes). If you don't mind an extra dirty dish and want to speed this process, you can pour the mixture into an ice bath (Pyrex or smaller container inside of a larger bowl filled with water) to help it cool quicker. 
5. After it's cool to the touch, stir in the sunflower, vitamin E & arrow root powder. 
6. Cover and refrigerate the mixture for 40 minutes or til it begins to firm up but has not yet solidified. It should have a small pool of liquid on top. If you let it sit too long and it's practically solid, don't freak out, just scrape the edges really well and move on to step 7. 
7. With a hand-mixer or emulsion blender, whip the semi-solid mixture until it's fluffy and peaks form. 
8. Transfer your whipped mixture to the containers you'll be storing them in. 
9. Add essential oils as desired. Stir well.
10. The butter will reach its true consistency over night. If you want, you can stick it in the fridge for a while if you're impatient. 

This butter would be a good moisturizing body butter without the addition of essential oils. But by adding the oils, you can make it into a variety of butters for different purposes. Here I made one container with essential oils added to make a rash cream, one with Panaway essential oil blend to massage on for sore-muscle pain relief, and one with Tangerine essential oil for a general-use body butter that smells yummy.

I keep a sticky note by each container to remind myself what oils I added in to each one, then afterwards I make a cute little label. 

One thing I like about this recipe is that the butter is completely cooled before adding any oils, so you can take your time making each one differently and playing with the amounts and combinations of oils til you like it. Or you can make a big batch and store the extra butter (without out essential oils added yet) until you are ready to add them later as you run out of something.


*When shopping for your coconut oil, sunflower oil, mango butter and shea butter, the key words you need to see on the packaging are: organic, cold-pressed or expeller expressed, and unprocessed or raw. Also on the shea butter, it should NOT be bleached.