I am making a guess with this comment. Could you try lemon or orange zest? Maybe some dried herb like peppermint? Or almond extract which has a pleasant aroma. I hope this helps.

I use this on my face all the time (made with sweet almond oil) and it works great! You can use whatever liquid carrier oil works best for your skin type.

Yes!

It doesn’t really matter, just so long as there’s enough water the tallow doesn’t burn.

You can simply omit the essential oils, but olive oil or another liquid carrier oil is necessary for the recipe to work. Olive oil is a carrier oil, not a volatile oil so people with sensitivities to essential oils would be able to tolerate it (unless they have a different allergy).

Sandalwood and Peru balsam essential oils are both more masculine smelling and helpful for dry skin. And peppermint can be great for headaches, but if too much is used or if you’re using it all over the body it can cause too much of a cooling sensation that some people don’t like.

It needs to be refined and purified first or it will start to go rancid fairly quickly.

It would probably still need to be purified since tallow meant for food usually isn’t processed as much as tallow meant for skincare.

If you want to double the batch you would double all of the ingredient amounts.

It won’t get really fluffy, but you can stop the mixer whenever it’s at the consistency you’d like. And it should whip after it’s been poured and cooled as a salve texture.

Vanilla and almond extract are mostly alcohol so they may not be safe for babies. Tallow is hard at room temperature so this balm is already firm without beeswax. Katie has a baby safe nipple cream recipe here! https://wellnessmama.com/motherhood/nursing-balm-nipple-cream/

Possibly… I’ve made this several times and it’s kept well at room temperature for months and stayed white. Something is probably wrong if it’s turning grey. It may have been that the tallow wasn’t rendered properly and had too much moisture in it.

It shouldn’t take nearly that long to whip it so something is definttely off! Is your house or kitchen on the warm side? The mixture may not be cold enough. You could try putting it in the fridge for longer.

It’s hard to say without knowing the exact ingredients used and the amounts. Sometimes the honey in skincare products is either very small, from honey powder, or it’s just honey scented and doesn’t have actual honey in it. It would probably make the balm sticky to add honey to this recipe, but you could use the honey as a face wash or mask and rinse off before applying the balm! https://wellnessmama.com/beauty/homemade-honey-face-wash/