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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These look amazing! They bring back so many memories of peeking through the candy jars at my Nannie’s house, just for something tasty and sweet!
I’m dairy intolerant, though, so I’m wondering what I could use instead of evaporated milk, that’s either soy or nut based…
Read through the comments before you; I suggested an option to another reader (vegan) about coconut milk, add agave, reduce it, thicken it…try that. Get creative! :)
I made some peppermint, anise, and vanilla mint using your recipe and they are phenomenal! Thanks!
Love the flavors…vanilla mint, ooh I’d love to try one! Thanks for LMK about it!
You mentioned dipping them in chocolate… Whenever I want to dip something that may or may not last through the process, I either freeze it, then dip, or I melt the chocolate and paint the chocolate on with a paintbrush. Dipping looks nicer, though. Just a random suggestion to try, though I am about to try this recipe myself, and will try to post a pic of my chocolate dipped ones. Wish me luck. :)
I’m so excited I want to make these for my wedding (six months from TODAY!) I do cakes and my groom has put his foot down on me doing my own (out of love, he doesnt want me turning into Cakezilla on our wedding day) But the mints….well I can make these in advance! How long do you think they keep? I AM going to have to try a “practice” batch (for quality control purposes, naturally) in advance before I start cranking out mass production mints. These may even be my guest favors in dollar tree favor boxes, perfect roundout to my DIY wedding!
Wow…you make cakes and you want to use this recipe as wedding party favors or to be served at your wedding…I am HONORED! Thank you :) The thing about these is that they will not remain “shelf stable” for long b/c of the butter. So you can’t put these in a gift bag and just forget about them b/c the butter will spoil and/or they will get melty. However, refrigerated, you can make these ahead ages in advance. I’d say a month…seriously. I would also imagine they freeze/unthaw just fine, too. So the pre-cooking isn’t the issue; it will be storing them in a temperature-controlled way for guests. PLEASE keep me posted as to the progress of this and how it all shapes up for you!!
The following website has free printable stuff, which includes gift boxes…. for your DIY wedding. There are some really nice ones….
https://dfc.c-ij.com/cpark/search.do?categoryId=ALL_CATEGORIES&datacount=15&langCode=en&value=gift+box&searchButton.x=89&searchButton.y=8
I’m so excited to see this recipe. I love butter mints. I haven’t had any in years. They’re getting hard to find in the stores. And I hadn’t thought of looking for a recipe. I cannot wait to try it out. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I do have a suggestion for your ”thin mints’. Every Christmas I make these. I melt almond bark and add a bit of peppermint or spearmint (depending on what taste I want) to the chocolate. I then take ritz crackers and dip them in the chocolate. Then I place them on a rack. You get the exact taste of a Girlscout thin mint cookie. ;-) My girls like to add sprinkles to make them look more festive for Christmas, but otherwise they are done. Quick easy cookies that taste awesome!
My mom makes a mint bark and I bet the mint bark-encoated Ritz would be heavenly! Thin Mints, but with Ritz. Ritz Mints :) Good idea!
I just found your blog and I thought these looked gorgeous so I made them today in green and blue (planning to test out the orange flavour tomorrow) thinking I would use them for my son’s 5th birthday party on the weekend if they worked. I loved them and they were so easy. According to Mr almost 5 though the green ones were disgusting (not a kid big on new things), however, the blue ones are delicious. I just smiled remembering what you said about Skylar.
Wow..that was fast! Glad you made them and liked them and the blue ones were approved of by the little guy :)
I made up a batch today and tried them with orange essence instead of mint and they were amazing ! I also decided to try adding red and yellow colouring in 2 separate places during the initial mixing stage. Obviously this meant my whole batch was orange in colour but the result was beautiful marble like streaks of red and yellow through the orange. Thank you so much for this recipie, I’m sure they will be a big hit today at Mr 5’s party !
orange in color, orange in flavor…sounds heavenly! I bet the melting taste-sensation just went perfectly with the orange flavor and with marble streaks…PRETTY! Thanks for LMK they were made and a hit!
Would these withstand the heat and humidity of summer outside for a party?
Probably not for too terribly long b/c it’s butter and sugar and unfortunately not made to really stand up to high heat/humidity for long time periods. You could freeze them and maybe buy yourself a bit of extra time. But I would say keep them inside or in a cooler somehow.
I always love these mints when you get them at restaurants and these seem so easy to make! What a great party favor idea also!
Thanks Mercedes and yes, they’d make great party favors!
Love these. I can’t wait to make them and give them as gifts in little mason jars over the holidays. What a great idea. Pinned this one :)
thanks for the Pin and for planning on making them!
I love this!!! I found a stray mint in the car on the way to the doctor and was pleasantly surprised that it was a soft melt-away one! They are my favorite mints, and the pastel ones always remind me of eating in restaurants when I was little–when eating out was a big deal and not an everyday thing like now. This is one of my favorite recipes that you have made. Good one!! :D
I was JUST thinking of you about an hour ago and bam…comment from you! Hope the moving-in process is going well and I was also thinking of you and these mints b/c I had a feeling you liked mint and yes, the melty ones are the best kind. The pastel ones at Chinese restaurants were my fave as a kid :)
Oh man! I love butter mints…but I have never thought to make them myself! I can’t wait to give these a try! :)
I love these mints! And I sort of want to grind up a few and rim the glass of a mint martini with them.
I love those butter mints. They look so easy. YUM!
Yum, these look wonderful! I adore mint and have it exploding in my garden now! My current fave recipe is just using the fresh mint leaves in raw vegan brownies or cakes, simple.
Ahh these are gorgeous! I love me some after dinner mints – they look perfect for shower gifts, great idea!