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.
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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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Oh, no way! I used to scoop these up like crazy when I was a kid, but actually I never knew until now that they contained butter – no wonder! ;) Such a creative recipe, Averie. Thanks for sharing!
well I think that the commercially made ones nowdays are probably some sort of non-butter but tastes like butter and a million chemicals to give them that “melting away” property…but these, and the ones I am sure I grew up on…real butter :)
I used to love these mints sooo much!!! They had a big bucket of these at my church when I was a kid. Heck yeah did a take a handful each time!
or at restaurants as a ‘thank you’…I thanked myself by the handful!
I love thinking about my grandma’s candy dish. Her’s was always filled with Reece’s Pieces. But I do love butter mints. Love the colors you chose. Very fun recipe!
Mine had these and Hershey’s Kisses. Tons of foil wrappers were unwrapped :)
What a great recipe to bring back going to Grandma’s house. My Grandma always had Extra Peppermint Gum and Pringles. The only place we got to eat either :)
gum and pringles..mine too! and lifesavers by the roll!
I love mint, but wow that stuff is powerful. Although, I’ve started to add it to my smoothies more often and I detect a tolerance building up, lol.
Ok, I love these candies – I can’t wait to try them. But I love, Love, LOVE the fact that you played Gin Rummy for $ when you were 6. That’s the way to live and learn!!! Another awesome post, Averie!!!!
And I saw your bday cake on FG. Congrats on a beautiful Tosi recipe. I just had too much going on to get that one done. And yes, start ’em young with card-sharking :)
Oh wow! I love these mints, yours sound and look fantastic. I remember them from my childhood as well. Bookmarking this!
OMG… I am so guilty of taking more buttermints at restaurants :P now I can just make them hahaha!
Naturally gluten free as well, what more is there to ask for?! :D
Thanks for the sweet recipe Averie, definitely gonna have to try it.
Please check out our blog! https://krisandtgogfree.blogspot.com/
College students eating Gfree on a budget. We post restaurant and product reviews, recipes, tips and advice :D
Fun blog you’ve got!
Yummy! I just made some homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream and forgot how much I love mint as a flavour! True that you have to be SUPER careful with mint extract though, I hear ya!
I realllly want to try your peppermint patties!
I like your last post…summer shoes :) That and some mint ice cream and Im all set for summer!
Of course the pink ones must taste better! It’s like at the end of the Disney movie Cinderella…when the fairies keep changing her dress from pink to blue and back to pink! My 2 sisters and I would always shout out: “Leave it pink!!” Pink is ALWAYS better when you are a little girly girl! :-)
OK. In a bazillion years I would never have thought to make these mints myself. I would have thought it was some long and drawn out and extremely difficult process. I love that you tackled this and as always, made it super simple. I have great memories of eating these at every wedding I attended as a child and also at my grandma’s house. Funny though, any weddings I have gone to as a grown up have not served these. A blast from the past?! :-)
I think people think they’re too…old-fashioned to be at a “modern” wedding but I’m all about nostalgia!
I love butter mints!!! So delicious, this is a fabulous idea. I agree with Bev – these would be perfect for showers!
Yeah I had written in the post showers or even as a party favor for girlie birthday parties or make them pastel and do more of an Easter/Mother’s Day theme…so many ideas in my head for these!
These totally remind me of baby showers and wedding receptions! I’d forgotten ALL about them. So cute!
Cute food is especially important at showers :)
I cannot believe you created those old-fashioned mints! Brings back so many memories!
Glad you have some memories of them, too!
My grandma had the same mints in her pretty crystal bowls in the dining room. I would try and sneak handfuls before dinner and always got caught. I never realized how easy these would be to make yourself!
I think it was standard issue for grandmas to have!
I loooove buttermints… I used to hoard them from restaurants :)
My grandma used to let me put them in my little girlie purse (or in hers). Free samples, you know :)
Oooh, I forgot about this one. My grandma always made these for Christmas and kept them in a jar. I will have to hunt through my old recipe box and see how similar the recipe is, as I haven’t made them in many years (10?). These look great Averie. I do know that I didn’t make that many little bites, I think they were more of a ball that you flatten into a disk. But these little bites are adorable!!!!
With this dough, I could have rolled it into York Peppermint patty type sizes to save time but I wanted to old-fashioned little mints! Lmk if you ever find the recipe!