Natural skin care: cocoa butter

Cocoa butter is the essentially the fat extracted from cocoa beans and used to add flavor, scent, and a creamy texture to chocolate, ointments, and cosmetics.

Palmer's Cocoa Butter products, $4-$10,
available at drugstores

Though it has a faint chocolaty aroma and a soft cream color, cocoa butter is mostly known for its moisturizing properties that helps give our skin a healthy glow. 

At room temperature, it may be hard, but once on the skin, it melts at body temperature and easily absorbs into the skin.

Naturally, it contains Vitamin E, which is known for balancing and hydrating the skin by adding collagen. With the vitamin, cocoa butter can lighten the appearance of scars, blemishes, and wrinkles. 

Cocoa butter also helps restore skin overexposed to the sun or wind, meaning it's a good resource to have during the sweltering hot days as well as the bitter cold days.

Pure cocoa butter is generally found in the cream version, but there are also moisturizing sticks for people who want to use it for spot treatment.