Cocoa Butter and Soap
Super moisturizing cocoa butter in soap and other skin care products
Cocoa Butter in soap and other bath products creates a super moisturizing and skin protecting formula.
This butter is high in Non-saponifiable content, making your soap very moisturizing.
Where does cocoa butter come from?
Cocoa butter is a fat that is obtained form the cocoa bean, this bean grows in a pod on trees found in parts of the Caribbean, Latin America and Africa.
There are two ways to get the cocoa butter from the bean pods.
One is by making a Liquor and the other is is to extract the butter using the Broma Process.
Liquor Process
This process of extracting the cocoa butter consists of cleaning and heating the bean which will help to release the nib form the bean.
The nib is then ground, which is enough to turn the cocoa nibs to liquid, leaving the cocoa butter behind.
The Broma Process
In this process the roasted cocoa beans are hung in bags in a very warm room, which will melt the cocoa butter (cocoa butter will melt just above room temperature) the cocoa butter is collected as it drips off the beans.
The list of items created with cocoa butter include: chocolate, medicinal suppositories, lotions, and lipsticks.
Cocoa Butter and Soap
The specialty of this butter is that the adulterated version has a higher non-saponifiable content, which is good!
This means that when you make soap, the cocoa butter does not get amalgamated with the lye and water and therefore you can feel moisturizing abilities in the finished bar of soap.
If you are considering making soap with only cocoa butter, you could, but the soap would be hardened within 8 hours and left any longer in the mold it would be difficult to cut, you also would have a very, very expensive bar of soap.
To use cocoa butter well in your recipes, save the melted cocoa butter until your soap is at the trace stage, and then add it to your soap.
Even at 7% of your total recipe, you will feel the difference in your finished bar. Your bar will also have creamy bubbles.
The benefits of adding Cocoa Butter to your soap recipe
Some of the benefits you will receive in adding this butter to your bath products are it’s antioxidant properties.
These properties will help to reduce the free radicals in your skin.
This butter is an excellent product when you are looking for a deep moisturizer.
It is known to help calm skin irritations, eczema and other skin conditions, so if you have sensitive skin a bar with cocoa butter could help your skin.
This tropical butter is also perfect for saving a summertime tan, creating a shiny and healthy glow to skin, either by creating a lotion with cocoa butter, or rubbing the pure and raw bar or chunk right on your skin.
Refined vs. Unrefined, aka Natural vs. Deodorized
Pure cocoa butter has a wonderful warm scent of buttery chocolate, but some product makers do not want this scent in the finished product. So in that case they would use the deodorized version. The deodorized version has the scent removed, this is done by injecting steam into the melted butter and then treating it with clay to create an unscented white butter.
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I agree and like this post alot. I use Cocoa butter in a lot of my soaps and I have a lotion that I use that also has cocoa butter. It help to revitalize my skin a lot so that it doesn’t crack or have irritations. Cocoa butter is an awesome, and seemingly natural ointment. I’d use it for just about all products, maybe I should go looking to see if there are more.
Hi Wil, thanks for stopping by and commenting. I’m glad you like my post, cocoa butter really is an excellent natural product. I make a Hemp butter in which I use cocoa butter and it works so well on those dry cracked hands and even feet.