Old-Fashioned Butter Mints — 💚❤️ These homemade butter mints require just 6 ingredients to make! This recipe makes a big batch, so you’ll have lots left over for gifting.
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Old-Fashioned Butter Mints Recipe
One of the highlights of going to my grandma’s house when I was growing up — in addition to playing Gin Rummy for money at age six — was raiding her candy dish. She used to have Jolly Ranchers, butterscotch candies, and after dinner mints in that little white dish with the lid. (When you’re six,”after dinner” means the minute you can get your sweaty little mitts on the mints, you do.)
I decided it was time to make my own homemade mints since I have such fond memories of them.
These homemade butter mints are so smooth and just melt in your mouth.
Normally with mints, one is all you need. Maybe two. With these, you want at least 17 because they are cool yet sweet, firm yet melty. Plus they’re tiny.
It may not have been the brightest idea to make a recipe that needed to be sliced into 250 little pieces (just a guess) and I am not one for extra steps and monkey business and fussy recipes, but I rolled the dough into long skinny logs in between my hands and it felt like I was playing with Play-Doh.
You will never want a store-bought after buttercream mints again!
Ingredients for Butter Mints
To make these creamy, soft mints, you’ll need the following:
- Unsalted butter
- Salt
- Confectioner’s sugar
- Sweetened condensed milk
- Peppermint extract
- Food coloring
Note: Scroll down to the recipe card section of the post for the ingredients with amounts included and for more complete directions.
How to Make Homemade Butter Mints
- Cream together the salt and butter for about a minute.
- Beat in the sweetened condensed milk, powdered sugar, and peppermint extract.
- Continue mixing until a dough forms, then remove the dough from the mixer and divide into one to four equal-sized balls.
- Add one dough ball at a time back into the mixer and add your choice of food coloring to the dough. Mix until the color is uniform throughout. Wash the mixing bowl and paddle between each color change and repeat this process until each dough ball is colored.
- To shape the butter mints, roll out a golf ball-sized piece of dough into a long rope and slice into bite-sized pieces.
Recipe FAQs
Yes, you can use any variety of mint extract you prefer (i.e. mint, peppermint, spearmint, etc). These after dinner mints will be tasty no matter what type of mint extract you use.
Just remember that mint extract cannot be undone and if you plan to make these, make sure you read my mint cautionary tales in the recipe section. You want to eat mints. Not eat a bottle of Listerine.
I’ve only ever made this butter mints recipe using peppermint extract, so I can’t speak to whether or not (food grade!) peppermint essential oil will work here.
I suspect this recipe would be nice with cinnamon extract, lemon or orange extract, or many other specialty flavored extracts from butter to rum to coconut to coffee extract. If you choose to use another specialty flavored extract, you’ll have to use your best judgement when flavoring these butter mints.
I used red and green food coloring, but you could make these for Easter, Mother’s Day, a baby or bridal shower and use pastels. The un-dyed dough is stark white and a blank canvas.
Old-Fashioned Butter Mints
Ingredients
- ¼ cup butter, softened (I used unsalted, but salted may be substituted based on preference)
- ¼ teaspoon salt, consider omitting if you used salted butter
- 3 ¼ cups confectioners’ sugar plus 1/4 cup+, if needed
- ⅓ cup sweetened condensed milk
- ½ teaspoon peppermint extract*
- food coloring, optional
Instructions
- To the bowl of stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine butter and salt and beat for 1 minute on medium-high speed.
- Add 3 1/4 cups confectioners’ sugar, milk, peppermint, and beat on medium-low speed until a dough forms. If the dough seems wet, add additional confectioners’ sugar until dough combines (I use 3 1/2 cups sugar). The dough will be crumbly but will come together when pinched and squeezed into a ball.
- Taste the batter. If you want a more intense mint flavor, add additional mint extract, to taste (see note below).
- Remove dough from the mixer, separate it into 1 to 4 smaller balls, and add one ball back into the mixer. Add the food coloring of your choice to the ball by squirting the droplets on top of the dough (careful when you turn on the mixer), and paddle on low speed until coloring is well-blended. Coloring will not blend completely into each and every speck of dough if examined extremely closely, but overall, mix until color is uniform. (I separated approximately two-thirds of the dough and made it green using about 15 drops green food coloring and made one-third of the dough red-pink by using about 7 drops red food coloring).
- Wash the mixing bowl and the paddle in between each color change and repeat until all the balls are colored.
- After the dough has been colored, either wrap it with plastic wrap and place it in an airtight container in the refrigerator to be rolled out later or roll it immediately.
- To shape the butter mints, place a golf-ball sized amount of dough in your hands and roll dough into long thin cylinders about 1 centimeter wide. Place cylinders on countertop and with a pizza cutter (or knife – be careful of your counter), slice cylinders into bite-sized pieces, approximately 1 centimeter long.
- Store mints in an airtight container in the refrigerator where they will keep for many weeks.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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Chocolate Sponge Candy — A classic homemade Christmas candy that’s light and airy candy inside and chocolate-dipped on the outside. Easy to make! Great for cookie exchanges and hostess gifts because it keeps fresh for a long time!
Chocolate Stained Glass Candy — Likely the prettiest Christmas candy you’ll make all holiday season! It’s FAST, EASY, and NO-BAKE! Milk chocolate takes on the appearance of stained glass by adding colored mini marshmallows, crispy Rice Krispies, and chewy dried cherries.
White Chocolate Truffles — Made with real butter, heavy cream, and a double dose of white chocolate in both the filling and the coating, these EASY truffles are CREAMY, decadent, and perfect for the holidays!
Microwave Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge — 🙌😋 Rich and decadent chocolate fudge adorned with peanut butter swirls! Made in the microwave with just SIX ingredients, there’s no boiling or candy thermometers involved in this FAST and EASY recipe for PERFECT fudge every time!
Melt in Your Mouth Homemade Toffee — 😋💚❤️ Irresistible, buttery, ADDICTIVE, and just melts in your mouth!! EASY and perfect for holiday parties, gift-giving, or cookie exchanges!!
Oh Averie these are fantastic!! And so adorably colored :)
Thanks, Megan! They were fun to color. Like Easter eggs in mint form :)
oh my gosh i love butter mints! thats so cute about your grandma — i used to play Gin Rummy with her too:) I love the colors too! And those mint/oreo brownies….what a treat! thanks for sharing!
Your grandma was a card shark, too, eh? :)
what a fun idea! We love these
Oh my goodness — butter mints are my favorite!!! My coworkers have always made fun of me for keeping a stash of them (the storebought ones) in my cube to snack on. But strangely I’ve still never tried them homemade. Totally bookmarking this one!! :)
LMK if you try them!
These look great! I must admit I am a victim to the excess peppermint except with ice-cream,the tinest bit of this gives such a MASSIVE punch! I have now (hopefully) learnt my lesson :)
yes peppermint is one of those foods you cannot un-do and until you cook with it at least once (and likely over-do it), you just don’t know!
I love those mints! Everything looks wonderful.
I remember these!! So funny Skylar likes the pink ones taste better :)
She’s ALL girl!
Oh I used to love those little mints! I very rarely make anything that ever calls for mint actually. Does a mojito count ;-) Jason loves a fresh mojito
That totally counts! And hey, these are GF. You can make them for your sister :)
Yum! I have great memories of the mints at my Grandparents house, too. That and sorbet (my grandpa used to call is “sure-bet”)… ohhh memories :)
Sure-bet. Love it.
wo this is cool I never would have thought up making mints! But yes I know which mints these are… I feel like they always have them (in open bowls, eek) at chinese restaurants. Love the simple pics and colors!
open bowls in Chinese restaurants… 100% parallel experiences!
So fun! I seriously need to give these a try!
My grandma used to have a “mint stash” too just like these mints! Haha. That side of my family is huge, and all of my cousins and I would raid the 2 mint jars like our lives depended on it ;) Love this recipe!
I was way older than one set of cousins so I had my pick at the candy jar :)
SO AMAZING to hear that I am the winner, Averie!!! I couldn’t be more excited. I have a Silpat already but am in desperate need for two since I tend to bake a lot of cookies at one time. AMAZING!! Love your giveaways.
These butter mints are my favorite! Kevin totally thinks I’m weird but whenever I see them at the store, I always buy a pack. In fact, I have one in my drawer at work haha! I love sucking on them – they are SO good. I am blown away that you made your own though! Never would have thought to make them myself AND I never knew they were so stink in’ easy! I’m with Skylar… the pink ones must taste better. :)
Your suggestions for coffee extract is just…..genius. And what colorful, gorgeous pics too!
There’s so many ways to customize these but as I mentioned, I sort of think that you’re stuck with an entire batch of that flavor based on the timing of the extract addition. But they’d make great gifts :)
Cute story about you and the mints!
these are so cool averie! I love this idea! I am so going to try them – i always enjoy your posts they are so coll and different!!!!!
I try to do things other than chocolate chip cookies these days and the typical stuff if I can think of things :)
I LOVE mint! These look amazing, such a great holiday gift idea. I wanted to tell
You I made your chilli nacho casserole for my husband- it is definitely going to become a regular in the rotation!
The one with rice – this one?
https://www.loveveggiesandyoga.com/2011/05/cheesy-taco-casserole.html
Or this one?
https://www.loveveggiesandyoga.com/2012/05/chips-and-cheese-chili-casserole.html
They’re both really similar but would love to know which one it was and which one is going on the regular rotation!
The second one! It was so great I made him chilli the first night and then the next night turned the left overs into a casserole. He will never eat left overs so this will be awesome!
Oh man I hadn’t thought of butter mints in forever! I could eat them by the handful. Maybe better if I don’t try this recipe, heehee:)
they are so good (and easy) to make! I hadn’t thought of them in ages and was at a restaurant and they had some out…and then the quest began.