Making homemade body sugar

Posted on by Jenny Posted in beauty products, green living, saving moneyTagged
Following up on my post about body sugaring as a “green” form of hair removal, I recently ran out of what I bought from Whole Foods and decided to make my own body sugar. This was touted as one of the main advantages of body sugaring by the sites that recommended it – that it can easily be made at home with common kitchen ingredients: sugar, water, and lemon juice.

There was a good video on YouTube showing how someone made their own, so I used that recipe. Making this stuff was much harder than it looked, though.

Body Sugar recipe:
2 cups sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup water

My first try was unsuccessful. I was using a 3 cup, dark non-stick pot, and there was so much foam that I had trouble telling what color the liquid was. I looked for other tips online and found that some people recommended using a candy thermometer, so I did that. I tried keeping it at 250 degrees, but I had to keep the burner very low to keep it from boiling over.

making body sugar
This pot was too small, it overflowed when the sugar boiled

It seemed to get the right consistency, but upon cooling, it was not sticky enough to remove hair.

On the second try, I used a larger stainless steel pot. Turns out, this is the secret. The first pot I was using was only slightly larger than the contents, which didn’t allow the mixture room enough to boil up and then down again. Using a 3 quart stainless steel sauce pan was a much better idea.

I used the second batch this morning to remove hair and it worked great!

So, here are my tips for making your own body sugar:

  • Use a pot that is at least twice as large as the mixture before it starts boiling. I recommend a 3 quart pot.
  • I am not sure if the stainless steel made the difference, but I do recommend stainless steel over a non-stick pan simply because you can see the color of the mixture better in light-colored stainless steel.
  • Do use a candy thermometer and maintain a temperature of 240-250 degrees.
  • Do the hard-ball candy test – put a drop of the mixture into a glass of cold water. When it is ready, the drop will bend and spread but not dissipate in the water.

For more info, read my previous post on eco-friendly hair removal.

5 thoughts on “Making homemade body sugar”

  2. J says:

    Ah yes…well, I say it is not great for large areas such as the legs, because it works best with coarser hair and the legs are full of tiny, tiny hairs amongst the regular hairs.

    I could not get the tiny hairs no matter how hard I tried and it drove me MAD.

    Therefore, I recommend it for small areas. Small, coarse areas. I will not go into any more detail than that. 🙂

  3. Sam says:

    One of the earliest methods of hair removal was used by Cleopatra, the Queen of Egypt. Historical records tell us that Cleopatra met with her handmaidens once a month for a hair removal session. Homemade body sugar to remove hair from anywhere on your body. However, using body sugar takes more time than conventional shaving. And, it’s a bit more painful.

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