I was looking for a plain simple cream base with good healing attributes to help someone with raw skin in a tender place and finally decided on coconut oil and aloe vera gel.
½ cup coconut oil
½ cup aloe vera gel
A couple of drops of the essential oil of your choice (optional)
Place the beeswax and coconut oil in a bowl over a pan of heating water on low – medium heat. No need for the water to be boiling.
Heat just until just melted.
Coconut oil melts at around 76 degrees Fahrenheit (24C) and beeswax not until 144 degrees F (62C). Keeping the temperature as low as possible will preserve the benefits the of coconut oil but practically the temperature will need to climb high enough to melt the beeswax for at least a short period of time.
I chose to use an impressed beeswax sheet broken into small pieces. By this I mean the sheets of beeswax that have a hexagon pattern pressed into them. They offer the thinnest pieces of beeswax and are therefore the quickest melting, making for the shortest time above 144 degrees.
Once the wax is melted, take the bowl off the heat and whisk in the aloe vera gel.
Now is also the time to add any essential oils if you are using. Peppermint for example would add a nice cooling effect to the cream while tea tree would up its healing qualities.
Your end purpose will decide what additions you would like but for now the benefits of the aleo vera and coconut oil are doing their job.
Placing the mixture over an ice bath and stirring it with a spatula until it thickens is also an option.
In this case however I used a stick mixer and kept mixing. It was a small amount of cream so the stick needed regular cleaning out, returning the lotion to the bowl (in this case a measuring cup for better control).
Let the lotion cool to room temperature, about 1 hour.
I whisked the cream again after that time and got a stiffer version before placing it in a container.
Due to coconut oils low melt temperature, the cream will liquify fairly quickly as the average body temperature is twenty degrees warmer. If you need something that stays around a little longer try adding a bit more beeswax to the recipe.
Additionally, coconut oil is available in two different melt temperatures, 76 and 92 degrees F. Try them out to see which one suits your needs best.
Aloe Coconut Cream from My Kitchen Wand
