cupuacu butter in soap and lotion bars?

Soapmaking Forum

Help Support Soapmaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Joined
Apr 5, 2018
Messages
3,672
Reaction score
12,738
Location
Minnesota
Soap peeps, a search didn't come up with much. If you have experience with cupuacu butter in soap or lotion bars, please share your opinion. Do you like it? Is it like comparable to shea or cocoa butter? Thanks!
 
Cupuaçu is fabulous! At least from the batch I'd got, I can follow Humblebee&Me's opinion on its questionable smell only partly: mine (unrefined too) had zero off-smell, but smelled and tasted just like raw cocoa butter/white chocolate. If not even more so than cocoa butter itself; and as another upside, while raw cocoa butter can lend a characteristic weird smell to soap, cupuaçu doesn't. It also melts much earlier (softest/lowest-melting butter I've had so far) and stays liquid very long, so it's great for swirl designs and for those plagued by false trace. Weren't there the prohibitive price.

As a tiny side note for the pedantic FA bookkeepers, cupuaçu contains a considerable amount (some 7%) of arachidic acid (C20:0), which is doomed a “minor fatty acid”, hence ignored by soap calculators. But from its similarity to stearic acid, it is reasonable IMHO to lift the “hardness”, “longevity”, and “creamy lather” numbers of cupuaçu by these 7%.

And a side-side nitpicking note from my Lusophone-sympathising me: it is weird that all of us gringos seems to be happy with the spelling cupuaçu (and few bother to write it “cupuassu”) – but with babaçu/babassu, it's the other way round (though it comes from Brazil as well).
 
I've used cupuacu butter in lotion bars, but I can't really tell a difference between it and cocoa butter when used at the same amount in my recipe.
I originally tried it out because I wanted more 'upscale/exotic' butters in my lotion bars, but for me cupuacu in this medium just wasn't worth the extra $$.
 
And a side-side nitpicking note from my Lusophone-sympathising me: it is weird that all of us gringos seems to be happy with the spelling cupuaçu (and few bother to write it “cupuassu”) – but with babaçu/babassu, it's the other way round (though it comes from Brazil as well).

I'm a translator in my other life and I have a theory that could explain this. We REALLY needed you gringos to pronounce/write babassu correctly, without any chance of someone using the word babaCu. Baba means drool and c+u means @ssh@le, and the general ideia is "someone who drools on..." Never thought I would curse on a soaping forum!
 
I'm a translator in my other life and I have a theory that could explain this. We REALLY needed you gringos to pronounce/write babassu correctly, without any chance of someone using the word babaCu. Baba means drool and c+u means @ssh@le, and the general ideia is "someone who drools on..." Never thought I would curse on a soaping forum!

:lol:
This is the funniest thing I've heard in days!
 
I'm a translator in my other life and I have a theory that could explain this. We REALLY needed you gringos to pronounce/write babassu correctly, without any chance of someone using the word babaCu. Baba means drool and c+u means @ssh@le, and the general ideia is "someone who drools on..." Never thought I would curse on a soaping forum!
Hands down the most original and unexpected posts I've seen here!! Major ****** here and hablo espanol muy muy pocito -- but I'm fascinated with language. When I was in El Salvador, after church, I unintentionally thanked an officiant for the nice bathroom instead of the nice service. 🤪
 
When I was in El Salvador, after church, I unintentionally thanked an officiant for the nice bathroom instead of the nice service. 🤪
Oh, Zing! I feel your pain, lol!!
Many years ago I was engaged to a guy from Thailand. While I was attempting to learn Thai I made soooo many blunders. My Italian heritage apparently caused quite a stumbling block per my Thai pronunciations and accent. On one notorious occasion I announced to his family during dinner that I had a remarkable excess of pubic hair.
All conversation at the table stopped and my fiance burst into laughter.
His mother had asked me how things were going with my fully-loaded college class schedule that semester and I replied (or attempted to reply) that I was very, very tired.
I'm still amazed that my tendency to add that hard Italian 't' to everything and emphasizing the wrong syllable can result in such massive miscommunication between languages!!
 

Latest posts

Back
Top