Hi Lazydandelion (Love your name, by the way!) – This recipe works wonderfully if you have a soft butter to start with. If your butter is hard, like cocoa or kokum, then melting it allows you to add oils that help soften and make the butter more whippable when cooled again. I’ve gotten some batches of mango butter that were really soft and whipped well without melting, while other batches are in hard chunks. So, it’s a good idea to pinch at your butter first and make sure it’s not a solid block.
If it’s hard, then melting and adding oil is the way to go!
If it’s on the soft side, then whipping it without melting is SO much easier and quicker.
I actually prefer to make body butter made this way, versus the melting/cooling/whipping way, though they do end up rather similar by the end.