Late last month, food TikToker @sooziethefoodie shared her method of making the dairy product into a usable candle. Despite not everyone quite getting it, the video has racked up over 2.1 million views and Hank Green has even weighed in with his scientific take on it all.
@sooziethefoodie regularly creates out-there food content, including roses made from bacon strips. This time, however, she transformed a stick of butter into a room-decor-cum-food-dip center piece, using just a few products.
Using cling film, she smoothed out the butter on top into a rectangular shape, before placing a wick in the middle. The butter was then wrapped around the wick and rolled into a traditional candle shape.
As confirmed by the TikToker in a comment, she used a raw paper hemp wick this time, but often uses beeswax wicks—both of which are food safe. For good reason too, as she dipped bread into the leftover melted butter from the candle.
The video sparked a wave of reactions from bewilderment to curiosity, but needless to say, the concept has gripped TikTok—despite not being new information for everyone.
“I don’t know how to feel about this,” commented one user.
“I have been uninspired to make anything for months, but this makes me feel something,” added another user.
This might be the first time many have been introduced to butter candles, but “fancy” restaurants across the world have employed the concoction for years, often adding their own twists to the recipe.
Across the pond, Restaurant Story in London popularly uses a beef tallow candle which creates beef dripping in which diners can dip their bread. While now-closed Primehouse in Chicago reportedly offered up headline-making bacon candles at one point, made with bacon fat, gelatin, spices and vinegar.
@sooziethefoodie similarly created another candle with garlic and bone marrow on her TikTok account earlier this month, which gained over 35,000 views too.
In 2016, Eater shared a tutorial online on how to make butter candles, instead melting butter with garlic before pouring the mixture into small candle holders with a wick. Once burned, the liquid is poured over the meal as a garlic butter in a bid to “blow your guest’s minds.”
Just yesterday, popular TikToker and YouTuber Hank Green did exactly what he’s loved for online—explained it.
In response to the video, and confusion it triggered, he explained exactly how butter can make a candle, saying that: “It’s hard to remember but there was a time when candles were cutting edge technology, and before that we had oil lamps, and what did we put in the oil lamps? Mostly olive oil.
“These are fat molecules,” he added, showing the molecules of oils behind him.
“Cooking oils are fats, we metabolize them and turn them into energy, it’s basically breaking down these big complicated molecules into carbon dioxide and water and taking out the energy, which is the same thing as literally burning them.”
“Now, waxes obviously are different compounds, you cannot metabolize them, for example, don’t eat candle wax, but you can tell they are also these long hydrocarbon chains that can burn, producing carbon dioxide, water and energy.”
Echoing the confusion of TikTok, he clarified: “Yeah, you can make a butter candle, but I don’t know why you would because it’s kind of a waste of butter.”
