HOMEMADE KOKUM BODY BUTTER RECIPE

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HOMEMADE KOKUM BODY BUTTER RECIPE

The internet will leave you spoilt for choice if you do a quick search on ‘DIY body butter’. Unfortunately, most recipes call for ingredients such as cocoa butter and shea butter which are often expensive and have to travel a long distance to reach us here in India. So then, is it still really eco-friendly? Additionally – during my initial dive into Amazon for cocoa butter and shea butter, I found these ingredients being sold in plastic jars. Since my goal was to get a zero waste hack for moisturizer, it seemed pointless to make body butter at home from butter that came in plastic jars.

But, I did not give up. I kept looking and I ultimately discovered kokum butter. It is an indigenous ingredient, derived from kokum trees in India. And, it gets better. On Amazon, I found a seller that offered kokum butter in cardboard and paper packaging. This truly felt like a jackpot.

This was my base for my homemade body butter. Now, all I needed was oil. This had to be easy and inexpensive oil, and what is better than coconut oil? That’s it. It hit me that this may be the most eco-friendly option because coconut oil is a ‘one oil, multiple uses’ kind of oil.

You need mainly two ingredients to get started.

Ingredients:

125 g kokum butter (about 1/4th of the 500g block if you order from this link)
120 ml coconut oil (preferably cold-pressed, unfiltered)
10 drops lavender essential oil (optional)

Tools:

Bain-Marie Set up i.e. Double Boil Set up
Electric whipping machine
Clean, dry and sterilized glass jar

Method:

Chop your measured kokum butter. Not only is this step arguably therapeutic, it just makes the process a whole lot easier.

2. Place the kokum butter and measured coconut oil in your heat-proof bowl.

3. Fire up your bain-marie and allow the contents to melt completely before turning the heat off.

4. Now is the time to add the essential oil, if desired.

5. Allow the mixture to cool slightly, before you pop it into the freezer. It will need about 15-20 minutes in the freezer. Alternatively, it can be refrigerated overnight.

6. Once it looks solid (but slightly soft to touch), start whipping! I must warn you that you might get tempted to dig your fingers in, but don’t! It looks edible and yummy, but it is not. Whip for about 10-15 minutes. You will see the butter starting to look whipped within 5 minutes, please continue whipping nevertheless for another 7-10 minutes.

7. Scoop it out to store in your jar.

Storage

Keep in a cool and dry area, away from direct sunlight.

DISCLAIMER

Reading this section is probably more important than the recipe, to set your expectations.

The body butter will not stay whipped for more than 10 minutes. You will notice, as soon as you begin filling up your jar, that it might liquefy or start to lose air. That’s normal! The only way to keep the whipped texture is to add other chemicals and preservatives – none of which we desire/need.
The texture of the butter will change depending on where you stay in India. I tried this recipe in Mumbai, and it worked perfectly fine. In fact, my experiments with cocoa butter were not so great as the butter could not withstand the climate here. Kokum butter, on the other hand, has been a fighter.
If the butter is too hard for you, all you need to do is scoop some out with your fingers and rub it. It will melt with your body heat.
Please ensure to wash and dry your hands well before you dig into the body butter. Using clean hands is important to ensure a good and long life for the butter.
Do not allow water to come into contact with the butter at any stage; water will hamper the shelf-life.
Effectively, one purchase of 1kg Kokum Butter will give you 8 batches of body butter. One batch of body butter lasts me 1.5-2 months and I use it once a day on my legs and arms.
You can store the kokum butter block for very long, the shelf life is 36 months from the date of packaging. So as long as you store it properly, the block will not go bad.