butter

I've been trying hard to do some real life "pinning", one such project is - wood butter. You can find the recipe here. It's gives new life to your wooden objects and it really works! The recipe is simple enough - bees wax and mineral oil. First problem here in NZ is we don't call it mineral oil, after extensive research and lots of questions at the chemist, turns out we call it paraffin oil, or liquid paraffin. Once I knew it's "NZ" equivalent it was much easier to track down, although we don't seem to sell it in such large quantities. The bees wax I found on Trademe, there is a whole heap of choices there and I chose a yellow block type one, rather than the white little pellets, just because they seemed more like bees wax to me.

Melt the bees wax and warm the oil, mix together and your done - simple. Now I have seen other recipes around that use olive oil, but I know that olive oil goes rancid and it's not advised to use it on your wooden objects, best to spend a bit more and use paraffin oil.

It was hard to get a good picture of the result today, grey and overcast. But trust me the results are really amazing, I kind of went crazy going around looking for more things to polish! The above bowl I picked up at the Salvation army, it looked like an unfinished wood turning project. It's Rimu and it's lovely now it's all polished up.

I filled one jar with the wax and had a little left over and I dropped a few drops of lemon oil in it. I really wish I had added it to the whole batch as it really smells devine.

Ok - A little update and some details I missed. - I used "Home Essentials" brand of paraffin Liquid sold at my local chemist. You can find the Home Essentials website here. They have a list of stockists to help you locate a local store.
- I've also just spoken to a helpful man from Home Essentials and he assures me that the paraffin liquid is food safe, so the polish or "butter" is fine to use on your chopping boards and wooden spoons.
- The liquid paraffin is sold in 200ml bottles so you need to add 48g of bees wax to keep the same ratio as the American recipe. the bees wax I had was in 50g blocks so I just used one of those.