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Lesson Info

How to Make a Balm: Whipped Avocado Balm

So, this is a whipped avocado butter or a whipped avocado balm. This is avocado butter. And avocado butter is fantastic 'cause it's super high in a wide variety of nutrients, minerals and vitamins, particularly A, D and E. And this is my handy-dandy stand mixer which I love. The way that you do a whipped butter and this is for any sort of whipped butter that you're doing, is you take your butter and you put it into your big mixer. And if you're at home and you're like, "Oh, I don't have a stand mixer. "That is a really nice piece of equipment, "but I do not have that." You can absolutely use your eggbeaters, right? The eggbeaters that we talked about earlier in the course? You can use your eggbeaters to do this to do the whipping as well, you just, your arm gets a little tired standing there. So you put it down, lock it in place, and start on low. And once the chunks start breaking up, you can go on high. It takes about a minute and you can see the entire table shaking so I'm really gl...

ad that I capped those lotions. (mixer whirring) Once you're at a nice whipped consistency, you use a spatula to scrape the sides and kinda scrape the attachment. The reason we do this is we want to make sure that everything mixes in evenly. And then, for this, we're going to be using apricot kernel oil. I really like crafting with apricot kernel oil 'cause it's a nice, lightweight oil and it has a neutral smell, so there's no smell in it, and it provides some really nice moisturizing and conditioning properties on the skin. So then you add your oil. And the proportions here, so the 14 ounces of avocado butter and the five ounces of apricot kernel, and the green tea seed extract, that's pretty similar depending on what liquid you're using, and it doesn't matter, really, what butter as long as it's not cocoa butter. So, like, cocoa butter is very, very, very solid at room temperature, and so it would not do as well with these particular proportions, but all the other butters, mango butter, avocado butter, Shea butter, do really well with these same proportions. So, we've got five ounces of apricot kernel oil, one ounce of green tea seed extract, and then I'm using grapefruit, using grapefruit essential oil which smells real, real, really good. And then we're going to turn all this back on on very, very, very low because if we turn it on really high, we've all this oil sitting there that would go everywhere so very low, just let this mix in and if you're working in a really hot, warm environment, this might take longer, right, because all of your butters would naturally be starting to melt at this point but it will still work. You can still whip enough air into this to make it a really good consistency. So now we're going to turn this on (exclaiming excitedly) and we're gonna whip, whip, whip and you can see it's starting to harden up again and it's whipping up really, really, really beautifully. Remember when we talked about how people sometimes find balms to be really kind of heavy on their skin and the reason for that, is because the oil is actually just sitting on their skin. There's nothing to absorb the oil, there's nothing else going on. I like to use a tapioca powder and this is a specialty product that's cosmetic grade tapioca powder that's a finer grind than what you find in the stores to make my butters really light and frothy, and also not too heavy. So in this, so here we are, let me just turn this off so I can show you where we're at with this. This, I mean doesn't that just look amazing? It just is so light and it's so fluffy and ahhh, it's beautiful and so easy and so quick to make and it smells just, smells so good with that grapefruit essential oil in it. Again, I didn't use too much, right, we don't want it to be a perfume balm, we just want it to be lightly fragranced. So now, I'm just gonna add five teaspoons of tapioca powder to make this product feel less greasy. So one, two, three, and again, brambleberry.com has full kits on how to make all of these already designed for you so if you want to make any of these and you don't really wanna go hunting for ingredients, you can go to brambleberry.com, search for CreativeLive and those are totally there and easy for you to get. So now you can mix this in slowly with the stick blend, the mixer here, I'm just gonna give this a quick little stir with the spatula just because I have visions of it kind of poofing just a little bit too much while we're on the air. So, mixed in, turn it on low, get everything mixed in and I notice that I'm not too built up on the sides but if I was making a larger batch, I might be pretty built up on the sides at this point so I'd wanna be scraping down on the sides to make sure everything was getting mixed in. If you wanna make this in larger amounts, I have seen people manufacturing this product with a big Hobart mixer like they use for baking so it's very possible to make this in a very large batch as well. And then once you've got it fully mixed in, this is a product that is solid once it hardens up. So it stays a nice whipped, kinda semi-solid solid so it doesn't go into small mouth jars. It goes into a, it goes into like either a bail jar or a regular jar, so in this case, I'm putting it into bail jars and I love these guys because they have the seal here and then they also have the high quality gasket so that they are easy to close and they're easy to stay sealed. Then all you need to do is just put the butter in. Again, these are all sanitized, all you need to do is just put the butter in and cap it. Then label it, again, using the same labeling instructions we talked about. Ingredients in order of descending use, identifying what the product is, putting the net weight on, saying how to contact yourself, and you're done, you're ready to give away or sell or just use it all yourself. So Kenna are there any questions? Let's check with our set, studio audience. Studio audience. Studio audience first, yeah. Let's see, we've talked about more questions about using that same stand mixer. Alexandra has asked, I put tapioca powder in my body butters and balms but once it is made, the butter feels kinda grainy even when I have used the KitchenAid. Why is this? And somebody else had asked if they could use arrowroot powder as a good, Great, great question. Substitution? So I'm curious, I'd be really curious if she used the cosmetic grade tapioca powder or if she used. 'Cause like brambleberry.com has the specialty cosmetic grade tapioca powder that's been ground so finely so that you won't feel the grittiness. I'm also curious, like if there's gritty in there I wonder if it's from butters as opposed like the Shea butter or the mango butter as opposed to the tapioca butter. Once this is done like this, all you do is cap it. You're done. Then to answer your question, can you use arrowroot powder? You definitely can use arrowroot powder and I would, if I was using arrowroot powder, I would actually invest in a coffee grinder or some sort of spice mixer because you're going to want to grind up that arrowroot powder even finer, you need to work the clumps out. You need to make sure that it's really just a light, and fluffy product 'cause what you're trying to do is absorb the oil that's in there so you get the light and beautiful fluffy feel and silky feel but don't get that heavy oil. Like right now, if I had to do my taxes, I could totally pick up all my tax stuff and not have any like oily stuff feeling because I used that tapioca powder. A couple more on the same topic, what about cornstarch, can you use cornstarch in place of tapioca powder? You could use cornstarch, it's heavy. Cornstarch is very, very, very heavy feeling so you're gonna get more of almost a paste as opposed to this light and fluffy. And if you use a cornstarch, same advice as from the arrowroot powder, just make sure that you are definitely 100% micronizing it up before you add it in 'cause think of how cornstarch is when you get it in a container, it's just very heavy. We like fluffy not heavy. We like fluffy and that's heavy for our balms. Okay, can you just clarify this? This is from Crystal Clark, with tapioca powder and the green tea extract which is water based, shouldn't there be a preservative in the balm? This green tea extract is oil based but that is a great question. If it was water based, a. It wouldn't have mixed in at all, not one iota, right, 'cause all we did was put oils and waxes in here so water can't actually mix into here. You might be able to get away with suspending the water in there briefly but it would come right out the second this got hard so the green tea extract was oil based, it's in fractionated coconut oil. The tapioca powder, since there's no liquid, there's no water in there doesn't have the ability to grow mold, it would really have to, you'd have to really misuse the product in order to get water in there to grow mold but that is a great question and I appreciate that people out there are really, took my preservative talk to heart, thank you. Would you be able to use clays in place of the tapioca? Can you use clays in place of tapioca? Yes, you can use clays in place of tapioca and you'd be basically making a mask. You'd be making the most wonderful, nourishing facial mask of all time but it would definitely not be a lotion, because once the oils kind of absorbed in, you would literally be left with dirt on your skin. Like purified dirt but dirt, so but it's how we make the most exquisite facial masks. Like if you, if you see the very expensive, overnight masks. I don't know if you guys see 'em but like you know $ for a tiny, little thing, $70 for a tiny, little thing, you could make something like this. Put on some serum, you could make your own oil, like a beautiful evening primrose or tamanu oil or green tea seed oil and a little bit of extract, put that on first, put this over top of it. Like kind of heavy, go to sleep, wake up with really, really, moisturized skin that is glowing. That would be a really good facial mask and also, or facial leave on product, also something that would cost a lot of money in spas. So the question about the regular tapioca powder, Alexandra responded and said thank you, that was it. Great, good. So, awesome. Okay, so folks are wondering if the body butter then turns hard in the jar, does it stay like that? Do you need a scoop to use it? So it stays, so this is product that I made last week. It settles a little bit but it's still is very fluffy. You don't need a scoop to use it, you can just stick your finger in to it and it is again, it would be really hard for it to grow bacteria, grow mold in there. You don't need a scoop to use it. The one thing I will say about body butters is if you live in Alabama and you put this in the back of your car and you let it sit there while you're at work all day in the middle of July, the butters and waxes, it'll melt again and when it reconstitutes 'cause you won't be whipping it when it reconstitutes like say you just drive home and you park in your garage and then you come back the next morning, it'll be hard, it won't be as fluffy but it won't have separated out either. It usually, this product won't usually separate out when it melts so that's great but it won't be as fluffy if it accidentally gets remelted sitting in a hot car in the middle of the country. Can you turn the butter into a bar that you can just hold in your hand? Oh, that's a great question. So lotion bars, so popular, who doesn't? I mean like lotion bars are basically this with the addition of beeswax or cocoa butter or any of the other types of waxes you can get out there. So this would do great with, this you could make into a solid lotion bar, same exact ingredients by adding about 25% wax and not whipping it. So if you wanted to make a lotion bar and pour it into say an individual mold like we saw earlier, or like a chocolate bar mold or into a little tin and carry it around with you or a push up deodorant type container, same exact recipe, add 25% beeswax to it. There are vegetable based waxes in case you are a vegan and you don't wanna use beeswax, even though beeswax, no bees are harmed in the making of beeswax. Smells so good you guys, it smells just like honey. You could add 25% melted beeswax to it, melt it, stir it, pour it in there and they'd get hard within about, depending on the temperature, 48 hours. Many people who make lotion bars, especially if they're making them in a mass quantity, will actually have refrigerators and just are used for lotion bars. They will just make the lotion bars on large trays, move them into the refrigerator and then they harden within an hour, you pop them out, you package 'em. Then they make great on the go moisture. Right, can you say again how long these last? How long these last? So, lotions and body butters and lotion bars and balms last as long as the shortest shelf life oil. So, all of the oils we used in all of these recipes have at least a six to 12 month shelf life if not longer, some of them have, some of these oils have a good three year shelf life. The reason that this basic lotion recipe was chosen is 'cause you're gonna have at least an 18 month shelf life. But basically, if the oil is going to sit on the counter and go rancid on it's own, like say you love flaxseed oil. Like flaxseed oil is so good and gamma linolenic acids, you love it, you love taking it internally, you're so like you wanna make everything flaxseed, flaxseed oil has like a shelf life of three months. So if you made this recipe and you put, instead of apricot kernel oil which has a very long shelf life, flaxseed oil in it, three month shelf life, right, 'cause it goes bad after three months, it starts smelling bad. So really you are only limited by the shelf life of the oil which is why when you're crafting at home and you're making products, you wanna make sure that yeah, your products are pretty fresh, right, you don't wanna be picking out that apricot kernel oil that you thought you were gonna cook with five years ago and decided to cook with and decided you weren't gonna cook with it and use now in lotion. You wanna make sure you're working with fresh ingredients. That's a great question about shelf life.