Beeswax wraps are reusable, fully compostable plastic free alternatives for wrapping your sandwiches, cakes, salads or leftovers to keep them fresh.
What’s wrong with cling film?
We all know that cling film isn’t great for the planet. It’s hard to recycle and even if it’s labelled biodegradable in fact it just breaks down into tiny particles of plastic that still end up in our marine life causing just as much havoc as plastic bags do. Like plastic bags cling film can be mistaken for food by marine life and can cause choking to those creatures that try to feed on it.
But we also need to reduce food waste which is also harmful to the environment, so how do we keep our food fresh without damaging our environment? Beeswax wraps are a really useful alternative to cling film that will do the job of keeping food fresh just as well without costing the earth.
Of course, you can buy readymade beeswax wraps, but if you would like to have a go at making your own it’s really easy and doesn’t take too long.
It has the added bonus that you can chose your own material and make them as plain or as pretty as you would like – you could even colour code depending on what you are going to wrapping them round.
Time < 15 mins
Skill Level Easy
Ingredients for beeswax wraps
| Varying sizes of natural fibre fabric, such as cotton, linen or hemp |
| Pinking shears |
| 1 ounce bar of beeswax |
| Baking parchment |
| A baking tray, or an iron, an ironing board and an ironing cloth or thin tea towel |
| a brush (optional) |
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Method
- Preheat your oven to low, that is Gas mark 3, 90C or 200F.
- Cut the fabric into desired shapes and sizes using pinking shears to stop the material fraying. Make sure that your pieces of fabric will still be smaller than your baking tray.
- Cover your baking tray with baking parchment, and place one piece of fabric down, it doesn’t matter which side up.
- Grate the beeswax
- Sprinkle the fabric with grated beeswax, covering the fabric as evenly as you can. There is no hard fast rule here, but you will need about half of an ounce wax for a 20cm x 20cm square.
- You can always add more wax if you didn’t initially put enough.
- Transfer to the oven and allow to melt for just under 10 minutes.
- Check that all the wax and melted. (You can use the brush to help sweep the wax to make sure that it is evenly distributed all the way to the edges and corners. Areas of fabric that are saturated with wax will appear a darker colour than when you started, so look for light patches, and if needed, add more wax over these light patches and return to the oven to melt for about 5 minutes, then check again.
- Peel the wax coated piece of fabric off the baking parchment, hang it for a few minutes using a clothes peg, or by hanging it over a hanger or the back of a chair, to allow the wax to harden.
Using your beeswax wrap
- That’s it – your wax coated reusable food wrap is ready to use.
- The heat of your hands softens the wax enough to bend and fold the fabric in to any desired shape, to allow you to wrap pieces of fruit, sandwiches and snacks, to use as a lid for bowls and casserole dishes, etc.
- A beeswax wrap is breathable so you can even use it to keep vegetables fresh longer, especially cut herbs and salads.
- To clean, simply wash in cool water with a little eco-friendly washing up liquid and hang up to dry.
- Cracks and folds will appear with repeated use, To refresh your wrap, perhaps after a year’s use, simply re-coat it with beeswax.
