Orange Peppermint Body Butter Recipe with Essential Oils for Dry Skin

Learn how to make an orange peppermint body butter recipe with essential oils for soothing, natural dry skin relief. This non greasy body butter is made with shea butter and kokum butter to moisturize dry skin. While the addition of lanolin helps to lock in moisture and act as a natural skin protectant against the elements. Blood orange and peppermint essential are also included in this body moisturizer recipe for their aromatherapeutic properties and natural skin care benefits.

Fall is by far my favorite season. I love the crisp air and the escape from summer’s endless heat wave. Moreso, however, I think it’s just I prefer my fall wardrobe. Turtlenecks and sweaters and 100% my jam. And fall is the first opportunity to drag these wardrobe staples out of storage.

Unfortunately, the arrival of cooler weather signals not just a closet makeover, but a skin makeover as well to accommodate for the cooler weather. Not only do I have to make sure to stay extra hydrated, but a good body moisturizer becomes a must. If store bought moisturizers tend to further irritate your skin, you’re not alone. There have been so many times when a commercial brand body moisturizer only exacerbated my dry skin. There’s nothing worse than applying a moisturizing lotion or body cream only to have it turn your skin into an itchy mess an hour later.

If you find that store bought or big commercial brand body moisturizers irritate your skin more than they help, you may want to try a natural skin care product that you make yourself. Body butters are a wonderful, natural alternative to body moisturizer lotions and creams. Body butters are easy to make, can be formulated so they are non greasy, and can also be whipped for a light, fluffy airiness. You can also add essential oils to any body butter recipe for their natural scent and wonderful skin care benefits.

I chose to use a simple, 2-ingredient essential oil blend in my orange peppermint body butter recipe with essential oils. Both of the essential oils I chose have aromatherapeutic properties that can boost mood. Something we can all use a little extra of as winter arrives, especially if you tend to get seasonal depression. They are also great for soothing dry and irritated skin.

Keep reading to discover how to make an orange peppermint body butter recipe with essential oils, and to learn more about the natural skin care ingredients I chose for this natural body moisturizer. You’ll love the moisturizing shea butter and kokum butter found in this recipe. They absorb into your skin easily, while the addition of beeswax helps to cut down on the greasy feel. Scented with an uplifting combination of peppermint and blood orange essential oils, this non greasy body butter recipe is not only a delight for your own fall into winter skin care routine, it also makes a lovely homemade gift idea for friends and family.

How to Make Body Butter with Essential Oils (Plus Tips & Tricks)

This body butter recipe with essential oils helps soothe dry skin and prevent additional moisture loss. I used an uplifting blend of peppermint and blood orange essential oils, which combine for an uplifting and wonderful scent.

In addition I also chose to use two butters when formulating my recipe to create a natural, non greasy body butter. Those butters are shea butter and kokum butter. Both of these moisturizing butters are wonderful non greasy options for any natural body moisturizer. With the addition of beeswax, I was able to create a light and fluffy body butter recipe with essential oils. This body butter soaks into the skin quickly to relieve dry skin and promote healing.

Making a homemade body butter recipe with essential oils is easy. You will need to weigh out the ingredients using a digital scale for consistency. This also allows you to accurately scale the recipe up or down as desired, and make additions or changes to the essential oils. As the maximum usage rate of things like using a fragrance oil or adding a preservative are based off a percentage, using weights for your body butter recipe makes it easy to calculate the amounts you would need.

To make this orange peppermint body butter, you simply weigh the ingredients. I start with the butters, wax and lanolin first. Melt the solid and semi-solid ingredients in a double boiler on the stovetop until melted. Once these ingredients have melted, remove from heat. Then stir in the liquid ingredients. In this case, you would then add the fractionated coconut oil and essential oils. Then pour the body butter into a jar to cool.

You can also make a whipped body butter using my body butter recipe with essential oils, if desired. (There’s more on that below.)

How Long Does Homemade Body Butter with Essential Oils Last?

My orange peppermint body butter recipe with essential oils will last about three months, or as long as the ingredient with the shortest shelf life. As my non greasy body butter doesn’t contain water, it doesn’t need a preservative to be stable at room temperature. As a result, it’s also much easier to make a homemade body butter when no preservative is required.

You should store homemade body butter in a jar with a lid and keep it in a cool dark place to extend its shelf life. You can generally leave it on a counter, but avoid direct sunlight.

How Do You Make a Non Greasy Body Butter Recipe?

Since most body butter recipes consist primarily of oils and butters, it can tend to feel greasy. These oils and butters are what serve as moisturizers for your skin, however, so it can be frustrating having greasy hands for several minutes after using it. Therefore, to help combat this, I carefully chose ingredients that would counteract any heavy, oily feeling on skin.

The beeswax in this body butter recipe with essential oils will help cut down on the greasy feel. While lanolin can sometimes feel greasy on your skin, both shea butter and kokum butter are non greasy and soak into the skin quickly.

Some people add a pinch of cornstarch or arrowroot powder to their body butter to make them less greasy, but I don’t find that my orange peppermint body butter recipe needs any due to the butters and beeswax.

If desired, you can omit the lanolin. However, lanolin is a wonderful skin protectant. Not only does it lock in moisture and hydrate skin, it also protects skin from the elements, as well as repeated hand washings.

How Do You Make Whipped Body Butter with Essential Oils?

My body butter recipe with essential oils is lovely simply poured into jars and allowed to harden. However, you can also make a whipped body butter using my non greasy body butter recipe. There are a few tips and tricks to making a whipped body butter, however, if you have trouble with the body butter getting light and fluffy. Typically this occurs if you try to whip your homemade body butter too soon.

If it is warm when you are making your body butter recipe with essential oils, then you may have a hard time getting it to whip. Or it just may be that ingredients in your body butter are still too warm and need to cool further before attempting to make a whipped body butter.

To make a whipped body butter using my orange peppermint body butter recipe, simply place the body butter in the refrigerator for an hour after it’s made. Once the top starts to harden, it’s ready to be whipped using an electric hand mixer.

Alternately, you can also place your body butter in the freezer for 5 minutes. Be sure to check on it often as your body butter will harden quickly in the freezer. You can’t whip your body butter if it solidifies. So be sure to take it out before it gets too firm.

You can also try this whipped body butter recipe for as another natural body moisturizer for dry skin relief.

How Do You Keep Body Butter From Melting?

Body butter can melt in warm temperatures. This is common in the summer if you are not running air conditioning or if you leave the container in your car. The beeswax in this recipe helps the body butter keep its shape and prevents it from melting too quickly. If you prefer not to use beeswax, vegetable based emulsifying wax is a suitable alternative.

If your body butter does melt, it is still fine to use. You can try to refrigerate it and whip it again if you want. However, outside of climate controlled storage, or in incredibly warm areas, you may want to slightly increase the amount of wax used to create a more solid body butter.

This whipped body butter soufflé recipe uses a combination of both emulsifying wax and xanthan gum powder as a thickener to help it stand up to warmer temperatures and resist melting.

Body Butter Recipe Ingredient Benefits for Skin

All of the natural ingredients in my orange peppermint body butter recipe with essential oils were chosen for their skin care benefits. I chose to use ingredients from Mountain Rose Herbs for most of the ingredients in my body moisturizer recipe. This is due to the quality of ingredients and their focus on sustainability, fair trade and organic agriculture. Some products weren’t available from Mountain Rose Herbs, such as lanolin and orange blood essential oil. Therefore I obtained them from other suppliers.

Following is a brief overview of the ingredients I used for my natural body moisturizer, along with benefits they provide when used in skin care.

Shea Butter

Shea butter is commonly used in body butter recipes because it is inexpensive and has several benefits for your skin. Shea butter contains vitamins A, E, D, and F. Although shea butter has less vitamin A than a retinoid cream, this is a good thing because it’s less likely to irritate your skin. Vitamin A is an antioxidant that can help reduce acne, eczema, stretch marks, wrinkles, and dry skin.

Vitamin E, another antioxidant, helps protect your skin from cellular damage. Specifically, it can help fight free radicals that can lead to the signs of aging. VItamin E can also boost your natural collagen to boost skin elasticity.

The vitamin D in shea butter also helps protect the skin and help boost cellular regeneration. Although vitamin F isn’t a common skin care ingredient, it is very moisturizing for your skin. It helps create a barrier on top of the skin, which helps lock in moisture and protect your skin.

Shea butter comes in both refined and unrefined. Unrefined shea butter has a natural scent to it and tends to have a slightly lower melting point than refined shea butter. As refined shea butter has the odor removed, it’s a great choice for making scented body moisturizers for your skin care routine. Alternately, you can also purchase high melt point shea butter from some soap making companies. This type of shea butter is odorless and has an even higher melting point than regular, refined shea butter. So it’s a great choice for warmer climates.

Kokum Butter

I also added some kokum butter for its skin benefits. Kokum butter is very moisturizing for your skin, and it’s good for dry skin and to boost elasticity in the skin. Kokum butter is an excellent butter for dry skin, and it’s especially good for skin that’s so dry that it has cracked (like your heels or your hands in winter).

Like shea butter, kokum butter doesn’t clog your pores. It feels light on your skin, so this body butter recipe with essential oils won’t feel greasy. Kokum butter has natural vitamin A as an antioxidant and is high in fatty acids that deliver moisturization directly to the surface of the skin.

However, unlike shea butter, which is a semi-solid, kokum butter is a solid butter that more closely resembles cocoa butter. It works well as a natural thickener in skin care applications, in addition to its moisturizing skin care benefits.

Fractionated Coconut Oil

Fractionated coconut oil is an odorless, liquid version of regular coconut oil. Unlike regular coconut oil, it ranks low on the non-comedogenic scale. Therefore it’s less likely to clog pores or lead to acne breakouts. Fractionated coconut oil is also lightweight and absorbs quickly. So it’s perfect when formulating a non greasy body butter. And, like kokum and shea butters, this oil is a natural moisturizer and anti-inflammatory. (It’s also sometimes called MCT oil.)

What are substitutions for coconut oil?

If you are allergic to coconut oil there are a number of substitutions you can make for fractionated coconut oil in my orange peppermint body butter recipe. My favorites are jojoba oil, a liquid wax, and camellia seed oil. Camellia seed oil, also known as tea seed oil, is the closest substitution for fractionated coconut oil. I also love hemp seed oil, although this carrier oil does have a natural odor associated with it. All of these substitutions for coconut oil absorb quickly and help create a non greasy body butter.

Beeswax Pastilles

Beeswax isn’t a common body butter ingredient, but I really like to use it. It helps thicken the body butter and helps it whip better. It also helps prevent melting since beeswax has a high melting point.

Beeswax also makes this body butter feel less greasy without using cornstarch or arrowroot powder.

Finally, beeswax helps form a protective barrier on top of your skin. Much like lanolin, this traps the shea butter, kokum butter, and essential oils on your skin so they can nourish and moisturize your skin. It also offers some mild protection form the elements, such as water, cold and wind. This makes this body butter recipe with essential oils especially beneficial for severely dry or cracked skin.

You can use either natural beeswax pastilles for my orange peppermint body butter recipe or white cosmetic beeswax. Natural beeswax is yellow in color and has a natural scent. While white cosmetic beeswax is white and has little to no odor.

Lanolin

I added lanolin to my body butter recipe with essential oils because it works so well for dry skin. Lanolin has gotten a bad rap lately, but it’s a wonderful ingredient for natural skin care. It produced by sheep, and it’s what they use to keep their wool conditioned. It’s harvested from the shorn wool, so it does not harm the sheep.

Lanolin is high in fat, so it helps prevent moisture loss from the surface of the skin. This keeps your skin moisturized and promotes healing. It’s also a wonderful skin protectant. This makes it especially popular in products like hand salves and nipple balms.

Essential Oils

I used both peppermint essential oil and blood orange essential oil, both from Simply Earth, to create my body butter recipe with essential oils. I love peppermint, but it can be too overpowering. The blood orange essential oil pairs well with it and tones down the peppermint.

Peppermint has a cooling effect on the skin. Therefore it’s really helpful in soothing raw, red or irritated skin. It can also help reduce tension in your head when used in aromatherapy. When used topically, it’s a natural antiseptic and cleanses the skin.

Blood orange essential oil is uplifting and stimulating. It can help reduce anxious feelings when used in aromatherapy. Topically, it can help reduce inflammation.

The combination of these two essential oils makes a wonderful, simple essential oil blend that smells wonderful and lifts mood.

Orange Peppermint Body Butter Recipe with Essential Oils

This body butter recipe with essential oils yields approximately 5.2 oz. of body butter by weight. Therefore I recommend storing your body butter in a 6 oz. jar or several smaller jars that hold 6 oz. of product by volume.

Non Greasy Body Butter Ingredients:

3 oz. refined shea butter
0.5 oz. kokum butter
.35 oz. fractionated coconut oil
.25 oz. beeswax pastilles
1 oz. lanolin
12 drops peppermint essential oil
36 drops blood orange essential oil

Directions on How to Make Body Butter with Essential Oils:

First, use a digital scale to weigh out the ingredients. You can weigh the ingredients as you go in order to avoid transferring them from one container to another.

Begin by melting the shea butter, kokum butter, and beeswax in a double boiler over medium heat. The beeswax will take a long time to melt, so be patient and keep stirring every few minutes.

Once the butters and beeswax have melted, carefully remove from heat.

Now add the lanolin and fractionated coconut oil to the body butter mixture. Stir well for about one minute, until all of the lanolin melts.

Then, add the drops of essential oil and mix to combine. 

Pour the orange peppermint body butter into a container or containers of your choice. I used a 4 oz. paperboard container and a 2 oz. jar. You could also evenly fill two 3 oz. glass jars.

Allow to cool completely, then place the lids onto your body butter containers and label for personal use or gifting.

How to Whip Your Body Butter:

To make a whipped body butter recipe with essential oils, place the melted body butter in the fridge for an hour in a glass bowl or container. I set it on a hot pad so protect the shelf from the heat.

Allow the non greasy body butter cool until it starts to harden on the top, but under the surface is still liquid.

Once the orange peppermint body butter starts to solidify, use a hand mixer to whip into a light and fluffy body butter. This should take about 10 minutes.

Then spoon into your jar or containers of choice.

Yield: Approximately 5.2 ounces

Orange Peppermint Body Butter Recipe with Essential Oils

Print

This orange peppermint body butter recipe with essential oils and shea butter makes a wonderful body moisturizer for dry skin care. Enjoy the aromatherapeutic benefits of this non greasy body butter in addition to its moisturizing skin care benefits for dry skin relief.

Prep Time 5 minutes

Active Time 15 minutes

Additional Time 30 minutes

Total Time 50 minutes

Difficulty Easy

Materials

• 3 ounces shea butter
• 0.5 ounce kokum butter
• .35 ounces fractionated coconut oil
• .25 ounces beeswax pastilles
• 1 ounce lanolin
• 12 drops peppermint essential oil
• 36 drops blood orange essential oil

Tools

• digital scale
• double boiler
• mixing bowl
• utensils for mixing
• 6 oz. container
• hand blender, optional

Instructions

1. Weigh then melt the shea butter, kokum butter, and beeswax in a double boiler over medium heat, stirring every few minutes.
2. Once the butters and beeswax have melted, carefully remove from heat.
3. Weigh and add the lanolin and fractionated coconut oil to the body butter mixture. Stir well for about one minute, until all of the lanolin melts.
4. Add the drops of essential oil and mix to combine. 
5. Pour the orange peppermint body butter into a container or containers of your choice.
6. Allow to cool completely, then place the lids onto your body butter containers and label for personal use or gifting.

Notes

To make a whipped body butter recipe, place the melted body butter in the fridge for an hour in a glass bowl or container.

Allow the body butter to cool until it starts to harden on the top, but under the surface is still liquid. Then use a hand mixer to whip into a light and fluffy body butter. This should take about 10 minutes.

Spoon into your jar or containers of choice.

More Homemade Body Butter Recipes with Essential Oils

If you like my orange peppermint body butter recipe with essential oils, then be sure to try some of these other homemade body butter recipes.

Non Greasy Body Butter Recipes

• Cinnamon Sugar Non Greasy Body Butter Recipe
• Non Greasy Vanilla Fig Body Butter Recipe
• Whipped Body Butter Souffle Recipe
• Non Greasy Bacuri Body Butter Recipe
• Lemon Creme Whipped Body Butter Recipe
• Unicorn Body Butter Recipe
• Non Greasy Cranberry Body Butter Recipe

Body Butter Recipes with Essential Oils

• Non Greasy Lavender Body Butter Recipe with Lavender Essential Oil
• Neem Oil Body Butter Recipe with Lavender & Tea Tree
• Chocolate Orange Body Butter Recipe with Essential Oils
• Magnesium Body Butter Recipe with Essential Oils
• Vegan Rose Body Butter Recipe with Frankincense
• Blood Orange & Lavender Magnesium Body Butter Recipe
• Shea Body Butter Recipe without Beeswax

This post originally appeared on Becca Ink.

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