Cocoa Butter

Cocoa butter is the fat extracted from cocoa beans.

Theobroma Cacao Seed Butter

Beige chunks

Hard and brittle at room temperature—just like a good bar of chocolate. When it melts, the oil is thin and smooth, and absorbs into the skin easily.

Deliciously chocolatey! You can also buy deodorized stuff that smells like mostly nothing.

Medium to fast

 34°C/93°F

Cocoa butter will help thicken recipes without adding a wax (and even solidify if used in high enough concentrations)—check out this experiment for more information. It’s wonderfully smooth, and brings its delicious chocolatey scent to projects. Yum!

I’d say so! I use it all the time, and I love just taking the lid off the tub and inhaling the super delicious scent. YUM.

I say unrefined all the way, but if you don’t like the smell of chocolate then refined is your best bet.

Amazing scent, smooth texture, it’s a rare brittle butter.

Not everybody loves the chocolate-y scent, but this is easily solved by purchasing deodorized cocoa butter.

There aren’t a lot of brittle butters out there that make good swaps; tucuma butter is my top pick. Kokum Butter can also work, but I don’t find it’s quite as brittle.

Include cocoa butter in the oil phase of your products. Melt it gently in a water bath along with the rest of your ingredients.

Stored somewhere cool, dark, and dry, cocoa butter should last at least two years.

You can also purchase dark cocoa butter, but I’ve found that to be a bit of a novelty; I wouldn’t bother with it.

100g (3oz)

Buy it from an online DIY ingredient supplier or Amazon. This is an ingredient you can also use the food grade version of, so if you find some for a good price at the grocery store, go for it!