Creating Your Own Vegetable Butter for Soap Making
When wanting to make a luxurious and wonderfully moisturizing soap that is creamy and leaves skin supple, smooth, and soft, you need to add a vegetable butter to your ingredients. Many soap makers use cocoa butter or shea butter, which are often the easiest to find. Both these ingredients make great additions to any soap, scrub, cream, cleanser, or lotion.
Though both the cocoa and shea vegetable butters are always readily available, sometimes soap makers want to branch out and test the waters. After all, any vegetable and fruit that produces oil can be turned into a butter, and using these different types, you can create truly unique soaps and beauty products because the final product will always have the properties of your chosen oil. So, for example, papaya oil will give your soap whitening or skin evening properties, while grapeseed oil will give your soap antioxidant properties.
It is often quite difficult to find a good variety of vegetable butters, however, and those who are seeking to go beyond cocoa and shea often find that they have to produce their own. This is actually quite easy to do, and it can be done quickly. You simply have to take a cup of your chosen oil and slowly heat it up in a double boiler. As the heat rises, you add about six tablespoons of shredded beeswax, letting it melt and stirring while it's melted. You want to continue heating the mixture till it's clear again, this means the beeswax has been completely incorporated.
Next, let the mixture cool till it's just slightly warm, then add half a cup of cider vinegar and half a cup of water. Mix until you get a creamy texture. Your mixture will also take on a new color, often the color of the oil you used. Once fully cooled, take your mixture and store it in an airtight jar in the refrigerator. (You can adjust the measurements depending on how much you want to make.)
What's great about knowing how to make your own vegetable butter is that you will never have to go on mad hunts for the product itself. Who knows? You may end up focusing on producing this one product to supply other soap makers seeking it! Plus, you don't always have to use it as a soap making ingredient or as an ingredient in other beauty products. It is actually a product on its own!
Making your own vegetable butter can be fun, but sometimes buying it is much easier. There is a great selection of butters online, and these stores can deliver to your home too!
Though both the cocoa and shea vegetable butters are always readily available, sometimes soap makers want to branch out and test the waters. After all, any vegetable and fruit that produces oil can be turned into a butter, and using these different types, you can create truly unique soaps and beauty products because the final product will always have the properties of your chosen oil. So, for example, papaya oil will give your soap whitening or skin evening properties, while grapeseed oil will give your soap antioxidant properties.
It is often quite difficult to find a good variety of vegetable butters, however, and those who are seeking to go beyond cocoa and shea often find that they have to produce their own. This is actually quite easy to do, and it can be done quickly. You simply have to take a cup of your chosen oil and slowly heat it up in a double boiler. As the heat rises, you add about six tablespoons of shredded beeswax, letting it melt and stirring while it's melted. You want to continue heating the mixture till it's clear again, this means the beeswax has been completely incorporated.
Next, let the mixture cool till it's just slightly warm, then add half a cup of cider vinegar and half a cup of water. Mix until you get a creamy texture. Your mixture will also take on a new color, often the color of the oil you used. Once fully cooled, take your mixture and store it in an airtight jar in the refrigerator. (You can adjust the measurements depending on how much you want to make.)
What's great about knowing how to make your own vegetable butter is that you will never have to go on mad hunts for the product itself. Who knows? You may end up focusing on producing this one product to supply other soap makers seeking it! Plus, you don't always have to use it as a soap making ingredient or as an ingredient in other beauty products. It is actually a product on its own!
Making your own vegetable butter can be fun, but sometimes buying it is much easier. There is a great selection of butters online, and these stores can deliver to your home too!
