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| choco lip balm by Stella Crown |
My friend N. asked me to make for her a chocolate lip balm and it is a very nice choice because chocolate is one of the most nutritious natural products, especially the bitter one. So I made a lip balm based on cocoa butter, famous for its moisturizing properties, which smells slightly chocolate while I added coconut oil as it fills the cracks of the lips and makes them soft and flexible.
This time I decided to use real black chocolate as it is full of antioxidants due to the intense presence of flavonoids and catechins while nourishes and softens the sensitive skin of the lips. My formula contains also castor oil because it has a low molecular mass and manages to penetrate deep in the lip skin while the addition of vitamin E hydrates the lips and preserves the final product.
The recipe contains real chocolate and high-quality cocoa butter and in that case you don’t need to add any essential oil or food flavouring, but if you want amp up the super awesome chocolate smell and if you are a little junkie with cosmetics as I am, you can add a few drops of cocoa absolute.
Since my friend is a vegan, I replaced the traditional beeswax with candelilla wax, a very hard vegan wax that melts more difficult and needs patience in homogenization. It comes from the leaves of the Mexican bush Euphorbia antisyphilitica. Contains up to 45% hydrocarbons and only about 20-30% fatty esters, it is ideal for the lips and therefore, is widely used in balms and lipsticks.
Chocolate Vegan Lip Balm
recipe for ~ 25 g | 0.88 oz
8 g | 0.28 oz cocoa butter
8 g | 0.28 oz coconut oil
5 g | 0.18 oz castor oil
4 g | 0.14 oz candellila wax
0.1 | 0.0035 oz vitamin E
5 drops cocoa absolute
grated bitter chocolate
tools
- a beaker
- a saucepan
- measuring spoons
- stainless steel whisk
- high accuracy digital scale
- lip balm tubes tins or jars
Firstly, you must sterilize tools, equipment and work surface and wear your gloves. This project might be easy easy, but it cannot be dirty.
Prepare a water bath, by filling a heat- proof saucepan 1/3 full of water and place it to low heat. Weigh all the ingredients. Add the cocoa butter, the oils and the wax in the beaker. Place it in your prepared water bath to melt everything through.
Add the grated chocolate and stir until it is unified with the oils. Remove the water bath from the heat, remove the beaker from the water bath and dry it off with a towel. Stir with a stainless steel whisk to incorporate. Add vitamin E and stir thoroughly. Pour now the cocoa absolute and stir again.
Pour the lip balm into tubes or tins (this formula will fill 5 balm tubes) and leave it to solidify before capping.
Enjoy!
