Cocoa Butter

Cocoa Butter

At Realize Beauty HQ we get to work with some wonderful ingredients and this, natural coco butter has to be one of my favourite base ingredients as it looks good enough to eat! 

Cocoa butter comes from the cacao bean and is often seen on cosmetic labels as theobroma cacao.  It is often used as part of the oil phase of a product as its rich, creamy and slightly waxy nature give it a protective and nourishing skin feel. It is also prized for its naturally high antioxidant properties meaning that it is unlikely to cause many problems with regard to formula stability.

The melting point of around 38C makes it a safe wax for curious kids to experiment making lip balms and creams with – many such as beeswax don’t melt until around 65C and that’s why we’ve started using it in our Cosmetic Kitchen workshops (which are as scientific as they are fun)!

Finally this good-enough-to-eat butter comes with a beautiful milky chocolate aroma which blends well with either vanilla oleoresin, sandalwood or benzoin resin to give your finished product the most wonderful natural aroma.

We get ours from New Directions who stock an organic and a standard version. I believe that you can also get this as fair trade certified so what’s stopping you?   There is some more information on how cocoa butter is grown and harvested here.