Swirled Body Butters – have you seen these amazing things? They are super catchy and seem to be all over Instagram so I was obsessed and experimented with them.
Here is my version. It’s a simple way to achieve a body butter of good consistency that can be squeezed out of a pastry bag with a gentle, swirling motion and with vibrant colors that make your body butter stand out from the rest.
Body Butter Base Recipe – 60% butters & 40% oils
A little secret I’d like to let in, as someone who’s been formulating and playing with DIY skincare for 10 years (omg where did the time go??), is to first decide on the main percentages of my butters vs. oils.
In this article I won’t talk about skin care products that contain water, as that is a different discussion and once you introduce water into a skin care formula, you also need to add an emulsifier and a preservative. Long topic, we can discuss it in the next blog.
Back to my little secret, there are 3 common base butters used in DIY skincare: Shea, Mango and Cocoa. All other butters can be similar to this in hardness and consistency, and once you’ve tasted them all, you’ll be able to sort them accordingly.
But if you’re a beginner or occasional DIY skin care creator, just stick to these 3 butters and these ideal ratios:
Shea butter – use a ratio of 70% shea and 30% oils
Mango – Use a ratio of 60% mango and 40% oils
Cocoa – Use a ratio of 50% cocoa and 50% oils
These proportions make a semi-hard body butter that melts on contact with the skin. I did a DIY tutorial and blogged about it here.
In today’s Swirled Body Butter recipe, I’ve used both Shea and Mango, and kept the butters to 60% and the oils to 40%. This gave me the perfect consistency of butter that I could easily push from a pastry bag into that beautiful swirled look that I’m so obsessed with.
Fruit Swirled Body Butter Recipe
For this recipe I used the following ingredients, I was able to fill 10 8oz jars. Please note that due to the empty space created by the swirl, each jar holds less than 8 ounces of product.
Components
To personalize the Swirled Body Butter, you can replace the essential oils and glitter colors with whatever you like (for example, you can use fruit scent if you like). Otherwise, be sure to keep the proportions and measurements the same as this recipe and it will turn out beautifully.
How to make a colorful body butter
Put the shea butter, mango butter, jojoba and almond oil in a bowl, put it in a pan with a little water and turn down the heat. Let everything melt completely, stirring occasionally. This will take about 15-20 minutes.
Remove from heat and allow to cool to the lowest flash point of your Essential Oils.
Note: The flash point of an essential oil is the temperature below which the aroma of the oil will remain strong and aromatic. If you heat an EO above its flash point, it will begin to evaporate and the aroma will diminish.
I used Bergamot EO, which has a flash point of 131 F, and Peppermint EO, which has a flash point of 156 F. Since Bergamot has the lowest flash point, I waited until my melted butters + oils were cooler than 131 F .I added my essential oil blend.
Then I put it all in the fridge for about 2 hours, or until mostly solid.
Then I put it all in my stand mixer with the whisk attachment and whizzed until it was fluffy, lighter in color and almost doubled in size. This took about 10 minutes.
I then divided the mixture into 3 bowls, added a different color of mica to each, mixing and folding until fully incorporated.
Piping sequence
For this step you will need:
- A large star-shaped pastry tip
- A large pastry bag
- Plastic food wrap. I used Press’n Seal since that’s what I had in my kitchen, but you can use a regular one
Step 1
Cut off the tip of your piping bag, tuck it securely into the end
Step 2
Cut about 1.5 feet of plastic wrap and lay it flat
Step #3
Make 3 even lines of your 3 colored body butters, making sure to leave some empty space on all sides of the plastic to make it easy to wrap everything.
Step #4
Carefully roll up the long side so that you have a sausage-like pastry bag with your 3 colored butters snugly inside.
Twist and close each of the two shorter ends of the plastic wrap
Step #5
Cut off one of the short ends and place it inside the main piping bag (the one with the piping tip).
Step #6
Place the tip in the bottom of your jar and squeeze the contents of the bag in a circular and spiral motion until the jar is full.
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YOU DID IT! Yes, you are done and I bet it looks like a work of art.
This body butter has a long shelf life of around 12 months. Make sure to store it in a cool place so it doesn’t melt. Apply it on your skin 2 times a day and your skin will love it.
Recipe video
As always, please leave any questions or comments you may have below.
