Butter Mints

Here in the Midwest it's common practice to put out a little dish of mints at dinner parties, bridal or baby showers, weddings and special events.  Often, it's store bought pastel  mints and many times people will mix the mints with nuts when they set them out.  My husband loves those mints.  And I love candy.  What happens when you mix those two statements together:  the wifey decides to make the hubby homemade butter mints.  

These turned out really great!  It took less than an hour from start to finish to make these and the recipe is plentiful.  I had enough for our family to enjoy for a few days and I also packaged them up in little bags along with some peanuts and gave them out to my coworkers on Valentine's Day.  Everyone absolutely loved them. 

Butter Mint Recipe

3 Tablespoons of Butter

1/4 Cup of Half and Half

1 Teaspoon Vanilla

2 Teaspoons Mint Extract

1 Pound of Powder Sugar

1-2 Drops of Food Coloring (optional)

In a small bowl, melt butter in the microwave.  Meanwhile, add the Half and Half, Vanilla and Mint into  the bowl of your stand mixer.  Add the Butter.  Next, add about a quarter of the powder sugar and mix well.  Turn off the mixer and add another quarter of the remaining sugar and then blend well.  Turn off the mixer again and add the remaining powder sugar and mix until well blended.  If desired, add your desired food coloring and mix one more time until the color is evenly disbursed.  The mixture should be the consistency of play-dough:  slightly damp, but not too dry.  

To shape, pinch a piece of dough off and roll into a small ball.  Then, on a clean surface, roll out the ball into a small log.  I rolled my dough out so that it was roughly the same width of my pinky finger.  Continue to do this until all the dough is rolled out.  Then, line the rolls up and slice pieces into a 1/4-inch to 1/2 inch pieces.    Place on a cookie sheet, uncovered, and let dry out for a minimum of 1 day.  The longer they air dry, the harder they will become - but will still melt in your mouth when eaten.

Yield:  I don't know.  It made a lot.  I used two jelly roll pans to dry them all out.  If I guessed, I would say it would fill 3 regular regular-sized sandwiched baggies.

I really, really liked these.  I know I will be making them again sometime soon.  I have some Cinnamon extract that I've been dying to use . . .and I think this would be a great recipe to try it out with (skip the Mint and use the Cinnamon).