Old-Fashioned Butter Mints — These old-fashioned butter mints require just 6 ingredients to make! This recipe makes a big batch, so you’ll have lots left over for gifting.
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 meltaway mints since I have such fond memories of them. Skylar told me the pink mints taste better. But of course. In actuality, same batter but that concept wasn’t fully registering. All that was registering was pink food.
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.
I lined up the logs and sliced through them with a pizza cutter. Back and forth, back and forth. The whole process took about 20 minutes and wasn’t that bad. I did it after Skylar went to bed (no lighting, no pictures) because I didn’t want her eating gobs of the Play-Doh.Scooping cookies with a cookie scoop so they’re all uniform can take just as long as Project Mint Roll Out.
Now, instead of just memories of raiding my grandma’s candy dish, I can raid my own. You will never want a store-bought after dinner mints again. If you’ve never had the mints I speak of these or these are the ones, but now I can make my own.
What’s in These 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
How to Make Butter Mints
To make this soft peppermint candy, you’ll first need to cream together the salt and butter for about a minute. Then 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. Once you’ve rolled and cut all the dough, store the homemade butter mints in an air-tight container in the fridge.
Can I Use Another Kind of Mint Extract?
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.
Can I Use Peppermint Essential Oil?
I’ve only ever made this butter mints recipe using peppermint extract, so I can’t speak to whether or not peppermint essential oil will work here.
Can I Use Another Flavor of Extract?
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.
Tips for Making Butter Mints at Home
These soft peppermint candies will make a perfect holiday gift and one batch makes enough to gift to a few people.
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.
I also thought about dipping these in melted chocolate for chocolate-covered mints but didn’t know if the dough would hold up as it took a searingly warm chocolate bath, so I skipped the dipping and that little what if.
Lastly, 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.
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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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Ohhh, I love buttered mints. I grab a handful when restaurants give them out, which isn’t often anymore. Great recipe!!
I love packaged butter mints and these look easy. I have a bunch of LorAnn flavorings, so it would be fun to try different flavors (chocolate butter mint maybe?!?!). I made some Kahlua creme de menthe bars for a party years ago. I initially thought the combo of liqueurs might be a little off, but it worked well together ( kind of a minty-mocha flavor).
Kahlua creme de menthe bars sound fabulous…or Baileys somehow in them, too. I love all those flavors! And yes, I have the LorAnn’s too and was thinking of going wild on flavoring these up…but time prevented me. But wheels are turning.
Haha, I used to do the same at my grandma’s! Except at her house it was the melty mints — the pastel colored candies shaped like Hersheys kiss, with white sprinkles on the bottom. Mmm. But my sister always loved these, the “after dinner” mints. And I hear ya on being careful with mint — NOT the time to be heavy handed!
Oh I saw your cake batter/yogurt dip on Kelly/eatyourselfskinny’s site and it reminded me of when you first posted it…a year and a half ago. Time flies!
I am so impressed! Kuddos to baker Avery!
Whoops, did not mean to hit submit yet. I had relatives visiting this weekend and one of them made a ginger-balsamic reduction….I seem to remember reading about a balsamic reduction you made a while back. I didn’t think I’d like it, but it was delicious – so much so that I posted about it today! The ginger got all soft and sweet from cooking in the balsamic – delicious!
I love balsamic. As for the sweetened condensed milk sub…gosh….you could try JUST the thick part of a separated can of coconut milk and sweetening that, heavily, with sugar and/or then boiling it to reduce it. You need something very thick and very sweet. In this recipe, it’s a must-have. Many other recipes, you can fudge it but not this one…
These are beautiful! They are so professional looking. They don’t look too hard to make, either….I just have to figure out a substitute for the condensed milk.
I love this idea bc I have been searching for this amazing mints in stores for a baby shower I’m hosting. Now I will impress people by making them myself:) How soon in advance can I make these and what’s the best way to store them so the will keep for at least 3 days?
you can make these well in advance and just store them in the fridge – butter and sugar will keep for a very long time in the fridge – but because there is butter in them, hence the name, you can’t bring these to an outdoor shower in the summer in the park and expect them to not melt! They are stable at room temperature for a few hours but do need to be stored long term in the fridge or they can become soft like butter will do over time. They don’t soften as fast as a stick of butter though, which is a bonus.
Wow, I am super impressed that you made candy! Very cool! I do like mint flavoured things.
These would indeed be perfect for homemade holiday presents! I will definitely file the recipe in the back of my head for mid-December. :)
Oh, interesting recipe, and if you’re willing to take the time to dye different batches, you could probably mix them and roll out designs/patterns too!
You definitely could mix, match, over-lay, layer, both with colors and flavor extracts..it’s RIPE for opportunity…if you take the time :)
Oh my god, I LOVE butter mints! These are just like how I make my peppermint patties at Christmas time!
I can’t believe you did all that rolling and cutting, though I can imagine it was probably someone meditative. I get like that with repetitive tasks sometimes.
Averie, those little mints are just adorable! Love, love what you’ve done! Mint, where do I use it? Hm, actually mostly in savory dishes and teas. I do love mint, I grow 3 variety on my patio, and use it in salads and dressings a lot, almost every day. What I use mint every single day is in my green tea, I think I am going to have a cup now, thanks for reminding me :) How long can you keep those cuties?
mint and green tea..I have never tried that!
I love buttermints!
I haven’t had those in ages.
Very nice girl!
Thank you my friend. Was trying for something other than…more cookies :)
Oh, thanks for such a great reminder of a favorite. They are beautiful.
Reminds me of something we called “wedding mints”. I think they had cream cheese in them and mint flavoring and were pressed into molds. They were served at weddings and baby showers when I was a kid back in the dark ages. HA!
Wedding mints! Yes! Very similar, actually. The ones I am thinking of really didn’t have cream cheese, just butter. They sort of melt away in your mouth. These are the same!
I loooooooveee that you made these! I haven’t had them in so long, but I used to love them!
Love these! They are so pretty and I bet delicious! Can’t wait to try them.
well if you end up making them, LMK!
Im jealous, my grandmother never had anything this good (ok, that makes me sound like a royal brat – but you know what I mean!! We were lucky if we found stale cookies in the back of the pantry). These little mints are crack – you can’t have just one!
Oh wow, both my grandma’s houses were LOADED up on treats and goodies…there was so much stuff it was insane. And great memories :)