Chapter 280 Making Lip Balm

Add cold water and ginger slices, bring to a boil over high heat to remove foam and impurities, then rinse with cold water again. Finally, add half a bowl of clean water and ginger slices to render the oil.

The lard rendered in this way has had its meaty smell greatly removed. When used to make lip balm, the flavoring will not mix with the lard's aroma, creating an unpleasant odor.

"Let's render the lard for a while first. Now let's look at the beeswax and fragrance. I don't need to explain what beeswax is, everyone knows. The fragrance is a concentrated essence that I distilled and extracted from roses. When making lipstick, you only need to add two or three drops to completely mask the smell of grease and give it a fresh fragrance. Ladies, you can smell it."

"Wow! It smells so good! Sister-in-law Cen is really amazing. She can actually extract the fragrance from the flowers."

"As expected of the commander's wife, she knows so many things!"

"Sister-in-law Cen, the aroma of lard is already wafting out. Should we start making the lipstick now?"

"Okay, let's begin. If you can read, you can take notes and write them down so you can study my steps later. If you can't read, that's okay. You can pass them around and ask me anything you don't understand."

As Cen Yan spoke, she put beeswax and a little lard into a sterilized glass measuring cup according to the recipe.

She doesn't plan to use an alcohol lamp to heat the materials for the time being, because for beginners, heating in a water bath is the best method.

As the ingredients simmered, Cen Yan stirred them with chopsticks. Her sisters-in-law, who had decided to save a piece to make lipstick, watched Cen Yan's steps intently, afraid of missing any important details.

Once the beeswax and lard had completely melted into a clear liquid, Cen Yan quickly took out the glass measuring cup and let it cool for a minute before adding the rose-scented essential oil and vitamin E oil to prevent oxidation, then stirred it rapidly.

Allow the various materials to fully blend.

"Why did I wait about a minute before adding the essential oil? It's because if the temperature is too high, the essential oil will evaporate too quickly when you add it. If all the essential oil evaporates and isn't sealed in the wax, the lipstick will become a flavorless block of wax."

"Therefore, we must pay close attention to this aspect."

"Now you can see that the ingredients for making lipstick have been fully mixed. The next step is the most crucial one."

"Because the mixture of beeswax, oil, and fragrance is very easy to cool and solidify, just like the candles we use. When it's hot, it's wax, but when it falls, it becomes a block of wax. Do you see this little bamboo tube, ladies? We call it a lipstick mold; it's used to shape lipsticks."

"This process must be quick, and the container must be filled at once, otherwise the liquid inside will separate into layers due to temperature differences."

"Okay, this measuring cup of material I just used has made a total of twenty-three tubes of lipstick. After it solidifies, we'll put it into the twist-up lipstick tubes, and one product will be completely produced."

"If any of you sisters-in-law have any questions, please raise your hands now."

For a while, no one spoke, because everyone was brainstorming.

They originally thought making lipstick would be difficult, but they never expected that they could just throw the ingredients in, mix them up, and then add a few drops of fragrance, stir, and bottle it.

More importantly, the amount of lard used in the 23 tubes of lipstick is not much, at most two spoonfuls.

If they could really make money, this amount of material wouldn't be enough to make them feel bad. They could just find a way to get more meat coupons, or plead with the political commissar and ask him to open a back door so that the family compound's side business could directly get pork fat from the slaughterhouse without coupons.

Finally, a woman raised her hand tremblingly, "Sister-in-law Cen, um, um... I have a question."