How easy is it to make your own body butter?

Natalie Hemengül

20.2.2025

Translation: Katherine Martin

It’s possible to whip up a fluffy body butter in your kitchen at home. There are loads of recipes online, but I fancied creating my own. This is the story of my budget-busting attempt.

By far the best body care product I’ve ever used was a homemade, whipped body butter made by a good friend of mine. I’d been complaining to her about the severe itching that plagues the skin on my legs in winter, so she sent me a jar of pure, unadulterated relief. It’s been a while since I painstakingly scraped the very last slither of cream out of the jar. Whipping up a similar creation myself has been on my to-do list ever since. Time to roll up my sleeves and give it a go.

First off, this is an experiment.

I don’t like sticking to recipes – I’m more of a trial-and-error kind of person. With this in mind, I’m keen to make my own version of the DIY cream using ingredients I already have at home. Let’s see whether a passable product comes out of the attempt. Lacking the nerve to follow my odyssey of experimentation? Don’t worry, there’s a shortcut. If you search the hashtag «whipped body butter» you’ll find a bunch of step-by-step instructions.

By the way, any recipe you choose will be based on oils and plant butters, so the formula will turn out super rich. You’d better bear that in mind if you’re less keen on that kind of consistency.

My ingredients

I’ve chosen to use organically farmed, cold-pressed ingredients. Having tinkered around a little with the quantities, I’ve worked out the right amounts for a jar with a capacity of about 150 millilitres.

• 60 g cocoa butter chips
• 2 tsp coconut oil
• 1 tsp shea butter
• 1 tbsp argan oil
• 1 tbsp almond oil
• 2 tbsp jojoba oil
• Half tbsp pomegranate oil
• 10–15 drops vanilla extract

My method

The first step is to melt the solid ingredients in a saucepan on the lowest setting. In my case, these are shea butter, cocoa chips and coconut oil.

Once the solid ingredients have melted, you take the pan off the heat, add the oils and mix everything together. After that, you pop the pan in the fridge and leave it until the mixture firms up. It’s important that your ingredients don’t make a solid mass. Instead, the mixture should slide slowly across the pan when you tilt it. At this point, it should also be a lighter colour.

I take several attempts to get the next few steps right. First, I scrape the mixture out of the cold pan into a bowl at room temperature. As I’ve learned, this prevents the mass from going all hard when you come to mix it later. This happened to me twice when sticking with the cold pan, forcing me to start from scratch.

Next up: vanilla extract.

Most of the recipes I’ve seen recommend using a hand mixer for whipping. With my blend of ingredients, however, the mixer turns out to be a bad move. (I think it’s down to the shea butter content). Far too quickly, the mixture goes stiff and crumbly. But watch out, looks can be deceiving. On more than one occasion, I’ve thought my creation was creamy (going on looks alone) despite the fact it’d turned hard and unusable long before. So I decide to go down the whisk route this time. As it turns out, it does give me more control over the consistency. Although it doesn’t make my product particularly fluffy, I end up with a spreadable cream.

I finish up by pouring my butter into a clean jar.

Just so you know, I obviously didn’t throw my unsuccessful batches away. I just melted them back down again.

How does it feel on the skin?

Mission accomplished. The cream’s consistency makes it fairly easy to apply. In fact, it melts as soon as it makes contact with my skin. It’s a bit like butter hitting a hot pan. Since it’s so rich, I only ever put it on in the evening before going to bed. By the morning, my skin’s nice and smooth.

My verdict: still room for improvement

Is my recipe perfect? No, but it’s the result of some honest work. Now, I’m hooked. I don’t just want to tweak the consistency once I’ve used up my jars. I’m sure I can also make more of the fragrance, because the shea butter I used smells pretty intense. My vanilla extract can’t really compete with it. Even so, it’s fine for the moment.

One last thought: DIY definitely isn’t cheaper. High-quality ingredients are expensive. In theory, you can also use them individually, so you have to enjoy mixing and experimenting. If not, I’d recommend sticking with a ready-made body cream or a vegetable oil or butter of your choice.

Natalie Hemengül

Senior Editor

Natalie.Hemenguel@digitecgalaxus.ch

As a massive Disney fan, I see the world through rose-tinted glasses. I worship series from the 90s and consider mermaids a religion. When I’m not dancing in glitter rain, I’m either hanging out at pyjama parties or sitting at my make-up table. P.S. I love you, bacon, garlic and onions. more

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