So I had a bit of a surprise when I went to my local Boots yesterday and saw a natty little product costing £15 containing coffee grounds, salt and coconut oil – it is sold as a ‘luxury’ body scrub. Looking online later, I found that there are a lot of posh companies selling old, used coffee grounds for an awful lot of money.
In Sweden we talk about flogging tinned porridge.
Thing is, coffee contains a lot of chemicals (not least caffeine) that are really good for your skin, and if you mix it with coconut oil, you have the perfect product.
The coffee grounds I use are pretty coarse, which is fine for the body, but if you want to sort puffy eyes, for instance, you need to speak to the nice people down at Costa & Co and see if you can lay your hands on their used espresso grounds. Espresso is a lot smoother than your average cafetiere ground coffee.
So, the recipe is; get your coffee grounds, mix them with coconut oil, salt and perhaps sugar and use it as a scrub in the shower.It is messy, and the coffee might well stain your tub unless you wash it off, pronto.
2 dl used coffee grounds
2 table spoons coconut oil ( Aldi sell jars of organic coconut oil for less than £3)
If you fancy, you can add salt or sugar to the mix. I would use a t-spoon or two to this mix.
Get wet, use the scrub, try to leave it on the skin for a few minutes while you wash your hair.
I also like to make my own hand cream. You will need.
the juice of one lemon.
almond, coconut or olive oil
a small amount of beeswax
cocoa butter (optional)
a few drops of essential oil – I like to use lavender, lemon or frankincense oil
Melt a 2 cm x 2 cm square of beeswax (and 1 teaspoon of the cocoa butter, if using) in a small saucepan on a very low heat.
Add the oil – you will need a bit more oil than lemon juice. Say you get 1 dl lemon juice from your lemon – you then need 1 dl oil + 1/2 dl . Whisk the melted beeswax and the oil together.
Then add your lemon juice and whisk the cream together. Remove from heat, and keep whisking – at this point your aim is to keep the cream from separating.
You can place the saucepan in a bowl of cold water as you whisk- this speeds up the process.
You should get a smooth yellow-ish product. If it didn’t turn out that way, then return to the saucepan and reheat it very slowly while whisking. If the cream is still separating, you’ll need to add more oil.
My hands get constantly cracked by the clay I use and this cream is the only thing that sorts them. Great for my feet, too. This cream is very greasy, so a little goes a long way.
Pour the cream into a clean empty jam jar. It will last for a few weeks before the lemon juice goes mouldy. You could leave it in the fridge – but hey. Just use it up quickly.
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but sometimes I will run a workshop for hen-parties or other big groups. I can cater for up to eight people.
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