What to do with an aloe vera plant.

There's loads of health benefits about aloe vera like it being an anti-inflammatory, detoxifying and helping the immune system, aids hair growth, lowers cholesterol and blood sugar yada yada yada.

Hence why we got ourselves an aloe vera plant. It has however been sat in our downstairs bathroom not really doing anything since the day we bought it.

Today was going to be that day that that changed....although in hindsight I may just abandon it to its place in the bathroom after this afternoon's palaver.

So the first thing that you need to do is extract the gel from inside the leaves. Simple....or so they thought.

Take your leaf and top and tail it, you can come back to those pieces but I found that smaller the piece is the more control you will have.

Cut of of the spiny side bits and you will be able to see the gloopy inside.

This is where things get sticky.

Using your knife take off the bottom and top leafy layers until you are left with only a clear jelly. cut off any excess green stuff.

Eh viola that's how you extract aloe gel/sap

Cool so now I've got this stuff in my fridge, what do I do with it now?

Well I'm glad you asked that because I've got some ideas to run by you.

Aloe Vera Water

Coconut water has seen a huge rise in popularity in the last few years and it has been hotly debated whether or not aloe water will take over.

Indeed aloe water has more of a kick to it than coconut water; think slightly more bitter. This is why I combined mine with a smidge of Eat Clean Tea's matcha powder.

What you'll need:

A blender (I used a Vitamix)

1 glass of water

2 tbsp aloe gel

1/2 tsp matcha


give it a little whizz and serve with ice

Aloe Vera Oil

Aloe Vera is widely used in beauty products indeed my favourite range from The Body Shop is the aloe collection. If you have sensitive skin you are bound to find it in the ingredient list of a very great many of the products you use.

So the question is how does the beauty industry get the sap from a plant into moisturisers, cleansers, exfoliators, lotions and potions oh my! The answer...in a oil


For this ridiculously simple oil you will need

2tbsp aloe gel

2tbsp coconut oil

you could also add a few drops of essential oil if you wanted to.

Gently heat the ingredients in a pan for about ten minutes.

You may need to sieve the gel a few times so that you don't end up with lumpy oil.

Sadly I have used up my supply of aloe gel in these two recipes so will have to start again from scratch next time....bummer.