I have fond memories of butter mints growing up. It was always a treat to buy a bag of the colorful candies from the store and eat them by the handful. Recently, I came across a recipe on Pinterest to make your own butter mints and was excited to find that I could actually make them with ingredients I always have around the house. I wasn't sure how they would turn out but now that I've made them, I have to say that they are delicious! I practically ate the whole batch myself!
Silky smooth, these mints simply melt in your mouth! The possibilities for shapes and colors are endless too! In the future, I know that I'll be tailoring these mints to party themes by making them in different colors and shapes. Meanwhile, you can make these as simple as you like, no molds required! You don't even have to color them if you don't want to!
These Butter Mints are relatively easy to make. It's just the first part that is the tricky part. You can't rush or you'll end up with clouds of powdered sugar all over the place. I made these with a hand mixer so know that it's possible if that's all you have! Add the powdered sugar a little bit at a time to the butter, and once it is all in the bowl, beat it for about 6 to 8 minutes on medium-high speed. IMPORTANT: Cover your bowl as much as you can with a towel otherwise the powdered sugar will go everywhere and you'll get clouds of it in your face! I held the towel over most of the bowl with one hand, and held the hand mixer in the other, stirring it under the towel. Add the milk and the mint extract next and stir some more.
Your mixture should eventually look like this:
Don't get discouraged! At first I really thought it wasn't going to turn out because the powdered sugar and the butter still looked like like dry flour! Finally I decided to try mixing it with my hands and that's when I found out that it was turning into dough. You may need to do the rest by hand (I always do). Start kneading the crumb-like mixture, squishing it together in your hands until it starts to form a ball of dough. Eventually you should have dough that is smooth and soft like play-dough. If you are going to be making different colors, separate the dough now. Here I was going for two colors so I made two balls of the white dough. If you want to leave out the food coloring and just have white dinner mints, that's fine too!
Now you need to put a drop or two of the food coloring you want into the dough and squish it in. If you squish it and knead it enough, it will form into a consistent color.
Here are my two balls of dough after I blended in the food coloring:
Now take one of the balls and roll it into a thinish log. I say thinish because the thickness of the log really depends on how big or small you want the mints. If the dough is too sticky you can roll it out on powdered sugar. Mine wasn't so I just did it on some parchment paper.
Now you can take a knife and cut off pieces. Don't they look pretty! I love how the pale pink and light blue turned out! :)
Put the pieces onto a parchment paper if you haven't already, and let them air dry overnight at room temperature. After that you can store them for up to two weeks in an air tight container apparently. Mine never last more than a few days so I haven't been able to find out how long they actually last! ;) I'm wondering if you can freeze these and if so how long they would last that way. Does anyone know about that?
I may or may not have snuck some pieces before they were completely "done." I mean, it's so tempting when they are just sitting out there in the open on the counter! ;)
Now that I know how easy these are to make, I'm going to do it again for sure! I am envisioning various lovely colors and thinking about getting some pretty flower molds to make them into shapes.
Feel free to comment below and show me your Butter Mint creations! My recipe is adapted from the one found here at The Splendid Table.
Recipe for Butter Mints
Ingredients:
8 Tablespoons (1 Stick) unsalted butter, cold and cut into chunks
4 cups of powdered confectioner's sugar
1/4 teaspoons of peppermint extract
2 tablespoons of milk
food coloring
Directions:
1. Combine the butter and confectioner's sugar in a mixing bowl a little bit at a time. Beat on medium-high speed for 6 to 8 minutes. (You can use a towel to cover part of the bowl to prevent clouds of the sugar going all over the place).
2. Add the milk and peppermint extract and mix for another couple of minutes to make sure it is combined.
3. With clean hands, start squeezing the crumbs together. It should start to stick together. Keep squeezing and squishing till the mixture forms a smooth, creamy dough. Form the dough into several balls depending on how many different colors you are going to make.
4. Add a drop of food coloring to each piece and knead and squeeze the dough till the color is incorporated. You can add a little more food coloring if the color is not as dark as you would like. Remember though, a little goes a long way and you really have to knead and squish to get the food coloring to color all the dough.
5. Cover a cutting board with confectioner's sugar and roll a dough ball into a log. I made mine about 1/2 inch in diameter. If the dough is sticking to your hands, you can coat them in powdered sugar first.
6. Use a knife to cut the log into small pieces. Spread the pieces on a sheet of parchment paper in a single layer and let them dry over night at room temperature, uncovered.
7. You can store the butter mints, layered between parchment or wax paper, in an air-tight container at room temperature, away from light for up to 2 weeks.
