Who doesn’t appreciate the cozy scent of gingerbread cookies baking in the oven? You can now enjoy that comforting aroma with this gingerbread body scrub. It’s versatile, great for your skin, and smells fantastic!
Here’s a tip: This homemade scrub can make a thoughtful DIY Christmas gift! You can package it in cute jars and tie them with a ribbon or tag that lists the ingredients or a sweet note. Making a large jar of sugar scrub is quite affordable, and a smaller jar is perfect as a stocking stuffer.
We lose an astonishing 30,000 to 40,000 skin cells every hour, which totals about a million a day. Using a sugar scrub can help speed up this process for healthier skin. Sugar exfoliates the skin, revealing a smooth and healthy layer beneath. While there are many variations, a basic sugar scrub recipe includes oil and sugar. This gingerbread body scrub skips any questionable ingredients and uses beneficial ones that give your skin a healthy glow.
Typically, gingerbread sugar scrubs use brown sugar for their exfoliating texture and delightful scent. Brown sugar is just refined sugar with molasses added back in. However, this recipe uses organic cane sugar and molasses separately. If you’re in a pinch and without blackstrap molasses, regular organic molasses will do just fine.
The recipe combines cinnamon and ginger with molasses to achieve that classic gingerbread scent. Both cinnamon and ginger stimulate blood circulation to the skin – a fancy term for this is rubefacient. A 2018 article in the Journal of Traditional and Complementary Medicine highlights cinnamon’s antioxidant strength. Aromatic spices like cinnamon are powerful antioxidants that combat free radical damage as they warm the body.
Increased circulation means more vital nutrients are delivered via blood cells. Cinnamon and ginger may also offer protective effects against certain cancers, as suggested in a 2016 article from “Nutrition, Spices for Prevention and Treatment of Cancers.”
This gingerbread scrub is already vegan as it contains no animal products. However, if you’re making it for someone who is strictly vegan, ensure you use vegan cane sugar, as some sugars are whitened using charred animal bones. Most organic cane sugars, though, are vegan.
While organic unrefined sugar is less harmful to consume compared to processed sugar, these sugars can be too abrasive for some skin types, especially on the face. Since this is a body scrub, it’s okay to use a more refined sugar here. Look for the finest grind of organic cane sugar, like evaporated cane juice. Even then, I wouldn’t advise using this gingerbread body scrub on your face, as cinnamon and ginger can irritate more sensitive skin.
If you’re not entirely sold on the gingerbread body scrub idea or want to try something new, there are plenty more delectable sugar scrub ideas out there!
Have you ever tried making a body scrub with kitchen ingredients? What’s your favorite recipe?
