I've been seeing lots of recipes for making your own mint candy! I love after dinner mints, so I decided to give it a try! The recipes looked so simple! I'm not much of a candy maker but it just looked so easy and tempting!The recipe called for powdered sugar. I didn't have powdered sugar but a fellow food friend showed me this recipe on how to make your own powdered sugar. Yes, you can make your own powdered sugar from regular sugar! Just put the regular sugar in a blender with some cornstarch and blend away until it becomes powdered! Well, this didn't work for me...it just became slightly less graulated! I was getting the feeling that these cream cheese mints just weren't meant to be for me!
I decided to continue making the mints. So I creamed the butter, cream cheese and sugar together and added in the peppermint extract. I tasted the mixture and LOVED it. It tasted very similar to a 'York Peppermint Pattie' minus the chocolate coating! It was very grainy though because I didn't use powdered sugar. But I didn't care because it still tasted great! My hopes were restored!
Then you're suppose to shape the mint mixture into some sort of candy shape. I chose to make small discs. The mixture was very sticky, so this was tricky...I love rhymes! I placed the discs on a waxed paper lined cookie sheet sprinkled with sugar to help keep the mints from sticking. This worked great! I also dipped the tines of a fork in sugar to make impressions on each mint disc, just to add a little design.
Then these mints need to air dry for 2 hours. It was difficult to keep from eating all of them before they were done drying! I think next time I will freeze them and then dip them in melted chocolate! YUM!
Here is how I made the mints!
INGREDIENTS:
4 oz. cream cheese - softened
3 cups powdered sugar
1 Tbls. butter - softened
1/2 heaping tsp. peppermint extract
DIRECTIONS:
In a large bowl mix together cream cheese, butter and sugar.
Then add in peppermint extract.
Mix well.
If the mixture is too sticky add more powdered sugar.
Form into teaspoon sized balls and place on waxed paper lined cookie sheet dusted with sugar.
Dip the tines of a fork in sugar then press lightly into each mint ball.
Allow to air dry for 2 hours.
Makes about 8 dozen small mints.
This recipe adapted from Allrecipes.com
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