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.
Table of Contents
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.
Pin This Recipe
Enjoy AverieCooks.com Without Ads! 🆕
Go Ad Free
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.
©averiecooks.com. Content and photographs are copyright protected. Sharing of this recipe is both encouraged and appreciated. Copying and/or pasting full recipes to any social media is strictly prohibited.
More Easy Homemade Candies:
Chocolate Caramels — Soft and chewy, nice and chocolaty, with the slightest hint of espresso flavor that makes the chocolate flavor even richer! A final pinch of flaky sea salt is optional but AMAZING!
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!!
Do you use salted or unsalted butter in your recipes? I am just going to make some butter mints but I don’t want them to salty!
Thanks
Sue
I always use unsalted because I am very sensitive to salt and like to control the amount I add rather than it being already included in the butter, but use what you prefer.
I haven’t read through all of the comments, so I’m sorry if this is a repeat-idea. If you’re content with one color and/or flavor, mixing the food coloring and extract with the milk before combining it with the confectioners sugar would be an easy and effective way of getting even color/flavor throughout the candy. :)
Super late to the party, but I just found this recipe this morning on Pinterest :)
I decided to whip these up with my toddler and OH. MY. GOD.
I’m going to have to make another few batches to give out for Christmas gifts. These are amazing and remind me of the mints my great grandma used to always keep on her coffee table.
Thanks for the wonderful recipe, Averie!
So glad you know these mints and that your great-grandma had them on her coffee table! Same here :) Enjoy & LMK how they turn out!
can I use vanilla extract or must I use a different flavor, would the vanilla still taste good?
To get them to taste like MINT you need to use a mint-flavored extract. If you use vanilla, they won’t taste like mint – not ‘bad’ but just not minty.
Haley, they sell vanilla butter mints, if u like them, try it!
What do you do if your batter if dry? Like a powder dry?
Add more butter.
Did you used to have a recipe on here for making them on the stove? Like boil all ingredients together, then pour out and pull until cool?
Nope, not me!
Oh, I remember these! My Mom and aunt would make these, but they used a marble slab and they were called “Pulled Butter Mints”. I remember watching them work – twisting and pulling the “dough”. I have looked high and low for the recipe, so if anyone knows what I’m talking about, please let me know.
Thanks.!
I make mints that are very similar to these, and yes- I have coated them in chocolate. Yum.
I also switched out the butter for cream cheese once, ooohhh that was good too.
Love the chocolate dipped idea and the cream cheese idea, too!
Hi, I am a young cook and I tried to make these mints for my mom as a gift, because they were one of her childhood favorites. I tried to put the dough into shapes and found that it would not keep its shape. It was too runny. Please help her birthday is soon. Thank you
I already replied!
I tried making these as presents and they wern’t thick enough to cut into shapes. Did I do something wrong?????-please help
Sounds like you maybe just rolled them too thin. I’ve never tried making ‘shapes’. I just make little mints in typical mint shape format.
Just made these and they are so yummy! Good mix of the butter and mint flavor.
I ended up yielding 480 of these things, 1 cm long by 1 cm wide (plus a couple pieces of dough that I ate and didn’t count).
I used 3 1/2 c of sugar and 1/4 tsp Watkin’s brand peppermint extract. I also used some blue food coloring so they’d look pretty when I give a bunch out as gifts!
Just put them in the fridge; looking forward to trying them cold.
Thanks for trying them and for the feedback about what you did and your yield! Glad you’re happy with the recipe!
I loved these as a child and I can’t wait to make these even though its going to be June. Maybe I will do all the colors for a summer .
just a thought – could you roll these out flat – like a really thick pie crust – and then cut them with a pizza cutter? they’d be cubes instead of having a more round shape, but it could be a big time saver.