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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Made these this evening by hand….only took 2 hours to make dough and roll and cut…lol …wanted to do trial run as I want to make these for my Daughters wedding. I will definitely find someone who has a kitchen aide and make in larger batches!!!!!
Thank you for sharing this recipe with me:-)
this is an excellent recipe! but i found that instead of rolling the dough out into cylinders, its easier to roll it out with a rolling pin, and then cut the dough into a grid pattern with a pizza cutter
Great and glad you found what works best for you!
In your recipe did you use salted or unsalted butter? Will it make a difference if I use salted?
I used unsalted and it’s up to you whether you want your mints to taste saltier or not depending on the butter you select.
I got the salted. :( Do you think it would be alright to omit the 1/4 teaspoon of salt, or do you think it would still be too salty?
I would keep it out, taste, and if you think it still needs salt, add it, and hope it incorporates.
Or, avoid any of this guesswork and just go buy unsalted butter before you start, which is a sure thing.
Could you make these with a cookie press, air dry, then do the “coat & shake” with sugar? Was hoping for cute little shaped mints for xmas gifts.
I have only made them like I described so any other methods would be new to me. Feel free to try & get back to me with your results!
Just made these. I’m letting them air dry for a few hours before I put in the fridge. However, I need to move out of the kitchen so I’ll stop eating them. Hopefully the neighbors will love them as much as I do.
Well that’s awesome that you’ve been sampling and quality-assurance testing & that things seem a-okay :)
Yum…yum…yum!! I just found your recipe on Pinterest and made a batch for a Christmas gift…but, I just had to try them myself, too! They tasted great! And, they were fun to make, especially when it came to the rolling out part. I felt like a little kid making “snakes” out of clay! lol Anyway, thanks for posting this! I’m going to make a lot more!
I felt like a little kid making “snakes” out of clay! = I had my then 5 yr old help me with that. She loved it :)
Glad you’re loving the recipe!
Made them with Maple Extract – Tasted like fudge! MMM…
Oh wow, I bet that was TASTY! good idea!
Hi there! Just made these. Love them. I posted about them my blog! Thanks for sharing!
juststaceyj.com
Thanks for trying my recipe. Glad you liked them!
Just a note I though of….first- I will definitely be making these! And second- I make mint and cinnamon hard candy each year, and I have learned the hard way that you need to make sure to use EXTRACT and not FLAVORING. Flavoring is artificial and will not taste nearly as good. For my hard candies, I use cinnamon oil or peppermint oil. I am not sure how those would work in this recipe.
I am very clear in the post about using extacts – so that’s covered. As far as using cinn or peppermint oil, I cannot personally vouch for either but based on reader feedback and those who have tried p-mint oil not extract, they were very, very strong. I would just make the recipe using the ingredients I called for and then after you have a feel for it, you can start playing around with oils, etc.
Hi there, how long will they store for? Thanks!
It was written in the recipe section of the post:
” Store mints in an airtight container in the refrigerator where they will keep for many weeks.”
My dad loves butter mints so I just made him some blue ones. I can’t wait for him to try them out. They would be great to make with children also. It’s like playing with play doh. Thanks for sharing!
Oh I am so glad to hear you made these for your dad! And yes, the recipe is great for kids – like edible Play-Doh! :) Hope your dad enjoys them!