Sugaring (hair removal)
Body sugaring (also called Egyptian waxing, Persian waxing or halawa, which means “sweet” in arabic) is an old practice especially in arab countries. A body sugaring will pull out the hairs from their roots, leaving your skin soft and smooth for a long time.
Here’s the recipe I use:
- 4 parts sugar
- 1 part lemon juice
- 1 part water
Some people also use honey in this recipe, but I found that the mixture was easier to go the way you wanted without the honey. This was especially important when shaping the eyebrows – yes, you can use this for the eyebrows, any body hair in fact.
If you want to try it with honey, here’s a recipe:
- 1 cup sugar
- juice of about 1 lemon
- ½ a cup of honey
The procedure is the same:
Melt all the ingredients and bring to a boil. Stir constantly, preferably with a wooden spoon. Keep it boiling at low heat (so that it’s forming bubbles, but not foaming) until the color is like dark amber or dark syrup. If you have a candy thermometer, use that. The mixture should be 120 C/250 F.
If you’re not sure if the color is right or not, it’s better to turn off the heat and try the mixture. If it’s too runny, you can always boil it some longer, but if it’s too hard, you’ll have to make a new batch. Test it by dropping a little bit in a glass of cold water, and if you can form it to a pliable ball when you pick it up, it’s done.
Now you’ll have to wait for the sugar to cool. It should be so cold that you don’t burn yourself, but still a bit warm so it can be formed.
Take a little bit in your hands, and pull at it for a bit, so that the color changes from transparent to more whiteish. Spread it out over an area, in the same direction as the growth of the hairs, and quickly pull backwards in the opposite direction. Repeat on one spot if necessary – you can use the same bit of sugar until you have a huge sweet and hairy ball that you don’t want to use anymore because its so gross. Throw it away and take some more. (If the mixture has cooled, just carefully reheat it in the same pan or in the microwave).
Store the leftovers in a glass jar and reheat whenever you need another go. Or just eat the leftovers, it’s like candy 
(though perhaps not so tempting after just having seen it mixed with your body hair).
