How to Make All-Natural Strawberry Chapstick with Real Strawberries

Here’s a homemade strawberry chapstick that actually tastes and smells like strawberries — because it’s made with real strawberries.

I’ve been making my own lip balm for a while now, but my daughter kept asking for those colored, fruity chapsticks you see at the checkout. You know the ones — full of artificial dyes, synthetic fragrances, and chemicals I don’t want near her face. So I tweaked my regular recipe and figured out how to make a strawberry version that’s naturally red and actually tastes good.

The secret ingredient is freeze-dried strawberries. I blend them into a fine powder, and that goes straight into the chapstick. Freeze-dried fruit has a long shelf life, so it doesn’t make your lip balm go bad quickly like fresh fruit would.

• 2 tablespoons coconut oil
• 2 tablespoons beeswax (pellets or grated)
• 2 tablespoons shea butter (cocoa butter or mango butter work too)
• 1-2 tablespoons freeze-dried strawberry powder (from about one small bag of freeze-dried strawberries)
• 5-10 drops peppermint or spearmint essential oil (optional, but I love the cooling feel)
• Small pipette or tiny funnel
• 12 chapstick tubes or small lip balm containers

1. Make the strawberry powder. Blitz a bag of freeze-dried strawberries in a blender until you get a very fine powder. You want it really fine so it mixes in smoothly and doesn’t clog your funnel.

1. Melt the base. Add the coconut oil, beeswax, and shea butter to a glass bowl. Set the bowl over a saucepan with a little simmering water to make a double boiler. Stir until everything is completely melted.

1. Add the strawberry and oil. Take the bowl off the heat. Stir in 1-2 tablespoons of strawberry powder — more for a deeper red color, less for a speckled look. If you’re using essential oil, add a few drops now. I like spearmint or peppermint for that cooling sensation.

1. Pour quickly. This mix starts to thicken as it cools, so work fast. Use a pipette or a tiny funnel to fill your chapstick tubes or containers. Leave a little room at the top.

1. Let them set. Don’t put the caps on until they’re completely cool and hard. They’ll firm up in about 20-30 minutes. You’ll know they’re ready when you can hold a tube upside down and nothing drips out.

That’s it. You’ve got a dozen tubes of strawberry chapstick that’s all-natural, smells like the real thing, and won’t make you cringe when your kid licks her lips.

One tip: if you want a really smooth texture, make sure your strawberry powder is as fine as possible. Chunks will make the chapstick gritty and hard to pour.

You can use any small container — tins, jars, whatever you have. Just adjust the amount of strawberry powder depending on the container size.