Like a lot of the things I am giving to people this year, the idea is not original. There are a ton of homemade sugar scrub recipes around at the moment but this particular one came from How Sweet It Is and was all about the coconut.

I was already committed to making the olive oil handscrub and the scrub seemed like a good companion gift. As an added bonus, I knew I had all the ingredients in my kitchen, except the coconut extract but coconut is not a favourite smell of mine, so I just thought that I’d leave it out.

Until I had the idea of putting peppermint extract (not oil – they are different!) and oh man, it’s amazing, it smelled like After Eights.

So before I give you the goods, a couple of notes, I had some food grade coconut oil that was given to me and I used that in the batches for giving away, but for the batch that I’ve been using, I used the tub of the Waitrose Baby Massage Coconut Oil which is considerably cheaper than the food grade stuff, it’s less than £3, I used demerara because I had it and it’s quite a ‘grainy’ sugar but you could use soft brown sugar for a softer scrub. I also think that you could use orange extract for a different ‘flavour’, just try and remember that it’s not for eating!

Mint Chocolate Sugar Scrub (adapted from How Sweet It Is)

What 

1 cup demerara sugar

1/2 cup solid coconut oil

1/3 cup almond oil

2 tablespoons cocoa powder (I used Bourneville!)

1 teaspoon peppermint extract

How

Put all ingredients in a bowl

Stir together until the coconut oil breaks down