Butters (beyond shea and cocoa)

[dixiedragon]

Exotic butters - what are your thoughts? I think shea and cocoa are fairly "standard" - I'm curious about things like babassu oil, sal butter, illippe butter, kokum butter, etc. The thread on babassu as deodorant got me thinking about this.

 

[lsg]

I like mango butter.

 

[Saintlysoaper]

I love mango butter! I find it definately superior to shea which does very little for my skin and it is not comedogenic like cocoa butter. I have also recently used kokum and mango butters as the only butters in my soap and the result is good hardness and a very mild bar. I am guessing this is because the combination is higher in stearic acid rather than palmitic? I might be way off there though!

 

[Arimara]

For soap, babassu is great if you can't use coconut oil and it's actually gentler though you still don't want to use too much in your soap. Besides that oil, I've only used mango butter and I have a preference for that to be in a cream or lotion.

 

[osso]

I really like Sal butter, I have used it in soap and also b&b stuff. Very nice.

 

[penelopejane]

I really like Sal butter, I have used it in soap and also b&b stuff. Very nice.

What is Sal butter?

 

[IrishLass]

Some of my faves are kokum butter, illipe butter and mango butter. I make my body butter with kokum and mango butter, and I use illipe butter in my shave soap/croap. I also use mango butter in my lip balms.


IrishLass

 

[osso]

What is Sal butter?

http://www.wholesalesuppliesplus.com/products/shorea-sal-butter.aspx

http://swiftcraftymonkey.blogspot.com/2010/01/few-other-butters.html

 

[TeresaT]

I made a soap with goat milk in place of water. (It was actually gm powder if that makes any difference to you. I used some of the lye water to mix it in and added it to the oils when it was fully dissolved.) I used four butters and babassu in the soap. I've tried out some slivers. Oh my gosh! Love it. It is a creamy decadent bar that I am saving for the winter when my skin gets dry and painful. The downside is it is pretty soft. I just pulled a sliver out to test it again to refresh my memory. The sliver is bendable. The bar feels fairly hard, I can't bend it or dent it with my finger. But I'm thinking this will not last long at all. For what it is worth, I made a 500 g test batch 45% lard, 5% castor oil, and 10% each of cocoa, kokum, mango, shea and babassu. My regular soap treated my skin well last winter; I'm hoping this GM+Butter soap will be even better on my skin. If it is, I may make it again using less lard and more babassu. Now that I've got tallow in the garage, I might put some of that in there and compare the two.

 

[chela1261]

I absolutely love mango and kokum butters. WSP has all kinds of butters where you can buy a 2 oz size at a reasonable price. I just bought some cranberry butter that I want to try. Avocado butter is good

 

[Scooter]

I make my body butter with kokum and mango butter...

I saw this recipe for body butter and thought it looked interesting:

75% mango butter (dry feeling butter)
24% hazelnut oil or macadamia nut oil (dry feeling oils)
1% fragrance oil

This recipe is quoted from:
http://www.makingskincare.com/how-to-make-whipped-body-butter/

My question: Is mango butter really more "dry feeling"? I have the same question about the listed oils.

Thanks!

Scooter

 

[TeresaT]

I absolutely love mango and kokum butters. WSP has all kinds of butters where you can buy a 2 oz size at a reasonable price. I just bought some cranberry butter that I want to try. Avocado butter is good

The problem with those "butters" is they're not real butters; they're mostly hydrogenated vegetable oils with other oils or fruits added. I was going to buy some of the butters to try (acia, brazil, coffee and cranberry butters were a few of them). But WSP's supplier won't say what the "proprietary" blend contains. I had found another company that sells coffee butter and that's how I found out it's hydrogenated vegetable oils with coffee oil added to it. (That company lists their vegetable oils as soy and sunflower.) I personally don't think paying $6.95 for 2 oz of coffee smelling vegetable shortening is worth it. Especially since I don't know the ingredients of that vegetable shortening. I can't say my soaps are "palm-free" or "soy-free" if I use coffee butter with a "proprietary blend" that may be nothing but hydrogenated palm oil or hydrogenated soybean oil. This doesn't matter now, since I don't sell. However, it may be an issue years from now.

 

[TeresaT]

I saw this recipe for body butter and thought it looked interesting:

75% mango butter (dry feeling butter)
24% hazelnut oil or macadamia nut oil (dry feeling oils)
1% fragrance oil

This recipe is quoted from:
http://www.makingskincare.com/how-to-make-whipped-body-butter/

My question: Is mango butter really more "dry feeling"? I have the same question about the listed oils.

Thanks!

Scooter

Yes, absolutely. In the thread "de funk de pits" I said I was going to use babassu oil on one leg and not the other to see if it actually did slow down the hair growth. I used the babassu on one leg and I used mango butter on the other leg. The babassu was oily and had to be rubbed in longer than the mango butter. The mango butter leg felt almost powdery while the babassu leg felt tacky for the first few seconds after I put the oils on. (FWIW: I forgot about the experiment after two days. I have no idea if babassu inhibits hair growth.)

 

[rainycityjen]

In my experience mango is great for anhydrous body butter (over shea and coconut) due to its less greasy texture. Kokum is a great addition to Italian style shave soap.

I have heard online that a lot of butter being sold as shea is actually sal butter.