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After-dinner mints are such a simple but elegant way to end a special meal. But if you want to truly elevate the evening, forget pre-wrapped mints from the store. Instead, serve your own by whipping up some cream cheese mints!
It sounds like a job best left for Willy Wonka but Savvy Saving Couple’s recipe for cream cheese mints is made with — you guessed it — cream cheese and only requires a handful of other ingredients. First, you’ll mix together some butter and cream cheese. Then, you add in powdered sugar to complete the dough. To ensue a minty flavor, you then add in a few drops of peppermint extract.
At this point you can also add in food dye to color your mints whatever shade you desire (red and green would be perfect for Christmas, blue and white for Hanukkah and gold for New Year’s Eve).
These mints don’t need to bake or chill. Instead, you let them firm up on baking sheets at room temperature for a few hours.
You can find the full recipe for these after-dinner cream cheese mints from Savvy Saving Couple.
More DIY After-Dinner Mints
If cream cheese mints sound a little too, um, cream cheesy, try this recipe for Old-Fashioned Butter Mints from Averie Cooks, which calls for sweetened condensed milk instead of cream cheese. Averie cautions to be very, very careful when adding in your mint extracts because they are much more potent than you might realize if you have never used mint before. Add in a drop or two and taste as you go, or you are going to find that your mints end up being way too strong to enjoy.
Low-Carb Cream Cheese Mints
If you have a family member who’s following a ketogenic diet or someone who is watching their sugar intake, it is possible to make these mints low-carb. This recipe for Candy Cane Cream Cheese Mints from No Bun Please uses powdered erythritol in place of regular powdered sugar. And since everything else in the recipe is already keto-approved (such as butter and cream cheese), these refreshing mints can be a guilt-free way to top off your holiday dinner and satisfy a sweet tooth.
Chocolate Mints
We also love the idea of bringing chocolate into your minty mix. This recipe from Taste.com creates a sweet, refreshing after-dinner mint that is reminiscent of those delicious chocolate mints that you get at Olive Garden.
Best of all, these aren’t difficult to make. First, prep a square baking pan by greasing it and lining it with parchment paper. Then, melt chocolate candy wafers of your choice. You can use dark chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate or even white chocolate. Melt the candy in the microwave or by using the double-boiler method for melting chocolate.
Pro tip: If you are tired of messing around with saucepans and glass bowls, you can find double boilers that were specifically created for this very purpose. We love these double-boiler options most. If you are a baker or you have one on your holiday gift list, this would be a perfect Christmas present for yourself for a loved one!
After you melt half of your chocolate, you make your bottom layer. Let it set in the refrigerator while you move to the next step. Then mix powdered sugar, vegetable oil and milk together, along with a few drops of peppermint extract. This becomes your second layer, which you pour on top of the chocolate layer after it’s done firming up in the fridge. If you want your second layer to be mint-green hued, you can also add a drop or two of food coloring into your mixture.
Then, let the two layers set in the fridge while you make your top chocolate layer. A fun way to make these after-dinner mints even more holiday-appropriate would be to use white chocolate wafers for your top and bottom layers. Then you can dye them with food coloring to be red, green, blue or gold. Or, once you get your top layer placed, you could sprinkle edible gold dust or colorful sanding sugar on top before sticking them in the fridge to set.
Homemade Peppermint Patties
We also love this recipe for After-Dinner Mint Delights from Taste of Home. These remind us of an elegant twist on York Peppermint Patties, and they’re actually fun to make.
To prepare these after-dinner mints, you combine butter and powdered sugar before adding peppermint extract and any food coloring you might desire. Then, you add flour to help hold everything together, shape the dough into balls and dip them into the melted chocolate of your choice. These treats then firm up in the fridge. You can dust the tops with flaked sea salt, sanding sugar or pearl dust in whatever shade you desire.
If you have a little more time on your hands, this recipe for After-Dinner Mints from Chelsea Sugar takes a bit more prep work, but the result is stunning and delicious. These chocolate-glazed mints are coated in coconut and filled with a combo of either peppermint, raspberry or pineapple.
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