Cocoa butter is the fatty portion of all chocolate bars sold in supermarkets, vending machines, and chocolate shops, unless the bars have been diluted with palm oil, but it’s also a strong weapon in your fight against substandard health.
Why? Cocoa butter is a key ingredient in endless homemade recipes of paleo/primal chocolate, cookies and cakes. Cocoa butter will allow you to banish sugar filled candy, greasy donuts and pizza and still keep some pleasure in your life.
As for its moisturising properties, I don’t recommend applying cocoa butter topically if you’re prone to acne. It has a comedogenic rating of 4 out of 5 and the testimonials bear this out, with acne patients reporting pimple outbreaks with great disappointment after reading the amazing tales.
However, cocoa butter is still promising, with vitamin E and cocoa mass polyphenol. When it doesn’t break people out, cocoa butter seems to enhance people’s skin tone very effectively, so I would recommend experimentation on a small portion of your face, or if you never get acne anyway, moving forward with full steam ahead.
Regardless, this article will inform you of the 8 best cocoa butter brands available.
Many are raw, and all but three are certified as organic. For a shortcut, Terrasoul Superfoods is the first and best brand.
Let’s get started:
One – Terrasoul Superfoods
The packaging is a simple plastic bag with a zip lock and without any BPA. The only ingredient in Terrasoul Superfoods is raw butter of the theobroma cacao bean. The bag weighs 1 pound for a lengthy supply, and the cocoa butter is cold-pressed, meaning that the temperature never exceeds 114F during extraction from the cocoa beans. This preserves the phytonutrients like cocoa mass polyphenols as well as the distinctive taste.
The greatness continues with Terrasoul Superfoods’ vast archive of reviews, where the words “amazing smelling”, “fresh”, and “delicious” regularly appear. An extra safety measure is that Terrasoul Superfoods rigorously examines every batch of their products for heavy metals such as cadmium and lead. Any batches which fail the test are ruthlessly discarded.
The only flaw of Terrasoul Superfoods is a subjective one: the cocoa butter comes in chunks as opposed to thin wafers. Some would call this inconvenient, but others would call it natural. Terrasoul Superfoods also has a 30 day money back guarantee, and the butter is intended for food consumption.
If you’re experimenting with cocoa butter and want to get the purest representation of it, Terrasoul Superfoods is perfect.
Amazon link: Terrasoul Superfoods Organic Cacao Butter.
Two – Navitas Organics
This cocoa butter contains no artificial preservatives and fragrances, with a single ingredient: the butter of the cocoa tree (Theobroma cacao) nut. The brand name indicates what you receive, as Nativas Organics is officially certified organic by the USDA.
Navitas Organics is also raw, and during your research you may have wondered the following: why do some brands say cacao rather than cocoa butter? It’s very simple: the Latin, scientific name for the cocoa bean plant is Theobroma cacao. Cacao, whether it’s cacao powder or butter, has simply evolved into the designated term for raw cocoa products, with cocoa reserved for those heated and fermented far more extensively, AKA the ingredients used in grocery store chocolate.
However, the terms are only applied sloppily, with no official regulation. Therefore, if you’re determined to buy a raw product, which has the advantage of extra antioxidants, always inspect the product more closely. Alternatively, you could simply buy Navitas Organics, one of the most reputable raw cocoa butter brands around. The final advantage is the high amount of reviews, which are almost all pleased with the “divine” taste and scent.
If you trust the reviews and iron-clad specifications, Navitas Organics is an above average cocoa butter.
Amazon link: Navitas Organics Cacao Butter.
Three – Divine Organics
The answer is yes. The cocoa beans are grown using natural fertilisers, without chemical pesticides. The beans are harvested by hand by farmers and since this is a raw cocoa butter, the heat is kept to the minimum required to separate the fat from the beans’ fibers and proteins, rather than a high level for quick extraction.
This cocoa butter has 3 origin countries: Peru, Ecuador and Venezuela. Every batch of Divine Organics is packaged in Novota, California however. This brand is certified as organic by the USDA, and comes in a plastic bag with a zip lock.
Divine Organics also has a particularly long 60 day money back guarantee. As for the testimonials, there’s slightly more dissatisfied reports than with Terrasoul Superfoods or Healthworks, but the majority of customers received fresh-smelling cocoa butter with a chocolatey taste. Finally, Divine Organics comes in chunks again as opposed to the thin and convenient wafers of Nuvia Organics.
This cocoa butter is indeed natural and the probability is that it’ll taste divine as well.
Amazon link: Divine Organics Raw Cacao Butter.
Four – Healthworks
All of these farms are organic, certified by the USDA and free from pesticides, as well as toxic heavy metals which often accumulate in the soils of poorer farms. The extraction is as natural as the harvesting: the highest temperature is 114F, making this cocoa butter cold-pressed.
Next, the cocoa butter is shipped to the USA, packaged into a convenient zip lock container bag where it reaches your shelf in a 2 pound serving. Like Terrasoul Superfoods, this cocoa butter is divided into uneven chunks varying from small to large. Healthworks is a reliable company too, selling top quality turmeric and chia seed brands.
As for the quality? The smell is “intoxicating” and “chocolatey” according to the hundreds of reviews. There’s a couple of tales of bitter tasting brands, but these are few and far between; even the most prestigious oil brand has an occasional dodgy batch.
Cocoa butter always has risks for skincare, but if any brand will succeed, it’s Healthworks.
Amazon link: Healthworks Cacao Butter.
Five – Nuvia Organics
That makes Nuvia Organics ideal for dropping into coffee, tea or hot chocolate for added fat and flavour, but you can easily use Nuvia Organics for other recipes and topical treatments too. The cocoa beans are grown in Peru using organic techniques, harvested by hand. The packaging says cocoa butter but Nuvia Organics is raw, heated at restricted temperatures.
The bag weighs 8 ounces and the user reviews are positive: the taste is chocolatey, while the smell is pleasant without any bitter or rancid flavours. The only downside is that in hot weather, some of the thin wafers arrive melted down into one big solid block, but this is rare.
Is Nuvia Organics a trustworthy company? Yes, for their shea butter is also excellent, but the organic certification guarantees the lack of pesticides and adulteration with other solid fats like lard.
Nuvia is ideal for an extra convenient cocoa butter.
Amazon link: Nuvia Organics Cocoa Butter.
Six – Kakosi
A completely natural cocoa butter. Kakosi is perfect for chocolate recipes, using in a topical treatment, baking cupcakes with, or even intoxicating yourself with the smell, for it is pressed at temperatures of no higher than 114F, guaranteeing that the phytonutrients and fragrance will remain. This cocoa butter is certified as organic by the USDA, bearing the reassuring seal on the bag.
This cocoa butter is sourced from the Caribbean, namely the Dominican Republic, with all their knowledge of growing cocoa beans. This differs to other brands listed here, meaning that you’ll probably enjoy minor taste variations with different brands, because of local cocoa bean subspecies; for example, the Peruvian Criollo variety used in Terrasoul Superfoods.
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Each bag of Kakosi contains 1 pound of cocoa butter, in a BPA-free plastic bag. The testimonials are positive: the texture is apparently fantastic, the smell heavenly, and the taste chocolatey. It’s one of the best reviewed brands out there. Finally, Kakosi is food grade and the butter of Theobroma cacao is the sole ingredient.
Kakosi is little different to our first five brands in its outstanding quality.
Amazon link: Kakosi Organic Raw Cocoa Butter.
Seven – Plant Therapy
Ann ultra trustworthy brand, Plant Therapy manufactures my top recommended tea tree oil and lavender oil brands. Their cocoa butter is similarly stellar, arriving in a 16oz tub, rather than a bag. As a certified organic brand, their cocoa beans are grown without any pesticides or artificial chemicals. The cocoa butter is sourced from West Africa, and packaged in the USA.
What’s more, Plant Therapy has a trustworthy reputation, as they’ve been around for years now. It isn’t a rogue company which sells one diluted product for a few months and then vanishes.
According to reviewers, this is a hard cocoa butter, but that’s a positive sign, for it eliminates the risk of adulteration with cheaper, softer fats. Plant Therapy also comes with a free spoon, although you’ll have to melt the butter before you can use it. The smell of this brand is reportedly “amazing” and “delicious” and the cocoa butter is raw, separated from the cocoa bean using low temperatures to preserve the nutrition. The only slight criticisms concern the occasional broken tub, which isn’t to do with the cocoa butter quality itself.
Plant Therapy is among the most trustworthy cocoa butters you could purchase.
Amazon link: Plant Therapy Organic Cocoa Butter.
Eight – Wild Foods
All the requirements are in place, as Wild Foods uses traditional growing methods, and tests their cocoa butter extensively for heavy metal contamination. The cocoa butter is raw as well, using temperatures of 114F or below to maximise the nutrition and flavour. The cocoa beans are grown in small family farms in Peru.
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As for the quality, negative testimonials are a rarity. This cocoa butter apparently smells “wonderful“, “delicious“, and “takes over your senses“. This is a hard cocoa butter, proving it to be the real deal, as cocoa butter naturally has a high melting point, consisting mostly of saturated fats (hence why dark chocolate is harder to melt than milk). Wild Foods is also in wafer form, giving this cocoa butter the advantage of convenience. The bag weighs 1 pound and is assembled in the USA.
Wild Foods does almost everything a nutritious cocoa butter should.
Amazon link: Wild Foods Cocoa Butter.
Conclusion
Despite the yearly warnings over skyrocketing chocolate prices, a 16oz bag of raw cocoa butter is still fairly affordable. Poor weather and harvests caused the price of cocoa beans to increase by 18% in 2017 according to some sources. Even the Ebola crisis was blamed for causing manpower shortages and transportation havoc. However, most cocoa butter brands here are sourced from South America, which may well have escaped.
Navigating the market is easy; although cocoa butters are occasionally diluted with lard or palm oil, these counterfeit brands are used for chocolate where the flavour of the cocoa powder masks the subtleties of the fat beneath.
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Thanks for reading!