I made these mints for Christmas, but I also make them year round. They are festive, but also delicious and not specific to the holidays, so why not! They don't taste like cream cheese at all, it just acts as a nice base for the sugar and mint.
The only problem with them is the recipe is affected by the weather. If it is dry out it takes as much as a cup less powdered sugar than if it is humid or damp.
Ingredients:
8 oz full fat cream cheese (yes it should be full fat, the low fat just doesn’t work quite as well)
6-8 cups powdered sugar
3/8 tsp good mint extract
Food coloring (optional)
With an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment (or by hand with a wooden spoon if you are feeling like a work out) mix together the cream cheese and the powdered sugar, adding the sugar in 1/2 cup at a time. Once about 75% of sugar is fully incorporated, add the mint extract. Mix well and continue to add the last quarter of the sugar. When the dough it finished, add food coloring if you want (I often just leave them plain, they are so pretty when they are a pure, snowy white). If you don't think they are minty enough, you can add more mint extract now. Mix on a very low speed until the color (and extra flavor) is mixed through. The dough should be soft enough to mold into balls but not sticky--almost like play-doh.
Here’s where it gets fun. Using a small ice cream scoop or a melon baller or your hands make shooter marble size balls of the dough. Put them on a parchment paper lined baking sheet with a little space between them (you’ll need it later). Once you have done about a dozen, flatten the mints slightly with the tines of a fork to make them a thick disk with nice little ridges on them. Continue until you have used up all the dough.
Leave them to set on the counter for at least 4 hours. Once they have hardened on the outside (not like hard candy hard...in fact hardened may not be the right word, but trust me you’ll know when it happened, even if I’m not describing it well) feel free to stack them and store them on a plate covered with plastic wrap in the fridge. Don’t worry, you don’t have to get them in the fridge right away, in fact if you have the space, leave them out over night, then you’ll know they are set properly when you go to store them.
If you don’t have time to wait, throw them in the fridge on the baking sheets. They firm up enough to eat, but they don’t get the nice coating that makes them stackable and keeps them from turning back into soft pliable balls of dough when they are out of the fridge for any length of time.
What I do, is put a dozen or so in the fridge so I can have mints soon (about 30 minutes) and leave the rest to set on the counter (about 4 hours, give or take depending on the temperature of your kitchen). That way I have the instant gratification of eating what I’ve made in less time than it takes to bake a cake and still have the nicer, properly (and patiently) prepared mints too.
Makes about 90 1-inch diameter mints
No comments:
Post a Comment