Two Kitchen Hacks for DIY Lip Balms
Photo credit: Getty Images
Yahoo Shine in Canada is saying you can make lip balm in a slow cooker. News to us! While we love a slow cooker, and while it can be used to make lip balm, there is a more efficient (and less toxic) way to do so.
Kristin Donnelly, who left her job as an editor at Food & Wine magazine last year to focus on her homemade lip balm company Stewart & Claire full-time, prefers to use a Pyrex liquid measuring cup. She heats a small amount of water in a pot, then places the Pyrex filled with the balm ingredients inside of it, like a DIY double boiler. “You basically just need to melt everything together,” she says, and that takes only about ten minutes. In other words, save the slow cooker for something that really needs to be cooked for hours.
And really, save it for food! “After you pour lip balm into containers, there’s a residue on whatever you cooked it in. I find glass much easier to clean,” says Donnelly. She pours boiling water over the glass and then rubs it with alcohol, something that would be more difficult to do with the typically non-stick bowl of a slow-cooker. A Pyrex, on the other hand, can be purchased for a fiver; why not buy an extra one and use it for crafts, while your other one sticks to the kitchen?
Finally, transferring the melted balm into pots or sticks for eventual use is easier with a Pyrex. It has a built-in spout, which many slow-cookers don’t, so you don’t have to use any extra equipment, like the funnel suggested in the recipe. And if the mixture hardens a bit while you’re transferring it, you can just sit the pyrex back in that hot water to loosen it. Easy does it.
A few more things Donnelly would do to this recipe (and we trust her—Stewart & Claire’s Old Fashioned balm has had a spot on our nightstand for years):
Go for golden, cosmetic-grade beeswax. “The unbleached wax has a richer, smoky smell, and the cosmetic-grade stuff has been removed of more impurities. I have used local beeswax before, and had to strain it of debris.” Donnelly recommends buying from Mountain Rose Herbs or Bulk Apothecary.
Add some fat. “Shea butter or mango butter really adds that luscious quality without making it too slick,” she says. So replace one tablespoon of the coconut oil in this recipe with shea butter and see how you like it.
Add a drop of vitamin E. “It’s a natural antioxidant, and will help the balm keep for 18 months to two years.”
Time to say goodbye to chapped lips (and to winter, soon, we hope).
