WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RAW AND WHIPPED SHEA BUTTER? 🤔

You keep hearing about whipped shea butter, how awesome it is, but you’re afraid to admit… you don’t exactly know how it’s different than raw shea butter 😬 Don’t worry! We’ll break it down. Scroll down to read the entire article or click on a header below to jump to a particular section.

What is Raw Shea Butter?

What is Raw Cocoa Butter?

What is Raw Mango Butter?

What are their benefits and texture?

What is Whipped Butter?

Why is Whipped Butter combined with oils?

What is Raw Shea Butter?

Raw shea butter is extracted from shea nuts. The nuts are roasted and crushed, ground and kneaded. The pulverized mixture is then boiled in water for hours. The oil rises to the top and hardens — that’s shea butter!

This video shows the process of shea butter being made. It’s pretty incredible.

What is Raw Cocoa Butter?

Cocoa (or cacao) butter is the fat from cocoa beans. The website Honest to Goodness explains;

“The beans are harvested from the cacao pods, and then cleaned and roasted. Next, the beans are stripped from their shells and crushed into nibs, which are then ground into a liquid known as cocoa liquor. This liquid is then pressed to separate the fat. This fat is cacao butter!”

What is Raw Mango Butter?

Mango butter is extracted from the mango seed. The website CBI explains;

“Mango butter is extracted by expeller pressing or cold pressing de-shelled mango fruit seeds. The oil-bearing mango seeds are placed inside a hydraulic press machine where they undergo high pressure and friction to release their oils, which seep through small openings at the bottom of the pressing barrel. The resultant butter is light in colour with a faint scent that retains its nutritive value.”

Raw Shea, Cocoa and Mango Butter — Benefits and Texture

Shea and cocoa butter have been used for centuries to heal and beautify both skin and hair. All three butters have a wide range of regenerative, antioxidant, anti-aging, softening, soothing and moisturizing properties.

But they are also very very dense. Their dense texture makes them difficult to spread on skin and hair. They can be melted down to make application easier. But they are heavy, sticky and can be very messy in a liquid state. Plus they quickly return to solid at room temperature.

What is Whipped Butter?

This is where whipped butter comes in.

Whipped shea, cocoa and mango butter are mixed with handheld or countertop kitchen mixers to soften their naturally dense textures by introducing volume and air.

There are two approaches to whipping shea, cocoa and mango butter.

1. Whipping the butter pure (without added oils)
2. Whipping the butter with oils

Whipping the butter pure/without oils does soften the texture to a certain point and improve spreadability, but these mixtures are still hard.

Whipping Shea, Cocoa and Mango Butter with Oils

We prefer whipping butters with oils. Here’s why;

SUPERIOR TEXTURE. Butters whipped with oils are far softer, fluffier and more spreadable, as you can see in the video below.

Over the years we’ve found that certain oils pair beautifully with raw butters. For example, olive oil is silky but very wet. When paired with cocoa butter, which has a very dry texture, it makes for a luxurious blend — Our Olive Oil Whipped Cocoa Butter!

Another example is our Unscented Whipped Shea Butter. A generous portion of coconut oil adds lightness and absorbency to raw shea butter.

ADDED NUTRIENTS. When you take ingredients as rich as shea, cocoa and mango butter and pair them with oils that have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial properties, your skin and hair get a nutrient boost that is pretty unmatched. It’s why so many of our customers report eczema relief (click here for reviews), burn relief (click here for review) and hair growth (click here for reviews) as side effects of continued use.

SCENTS! Probably the funnest part of what we do. Whipping shea, cocoa and mango butter with essential oils allows us to create a wide variety of scents. For example, our Lemon Cream Blended Butter smells like a lemon pie, our Vanilla Whipped Shea Butter smells like vanilla ice cream, and The Woods Blended Butter smells like a deep forrest. With added oils we can get creative and provide a beautiful aromatherapy experience for our customers.

So there you have it! We hope this was informative! You can view our selection of whipped butters (and African black soap!) below.