Creamy Mints: Red vs Green!

Christmas time always reminds me of baking. I rarely buy any gifts. Most come from my kitchen. This recipe is easy and produces a lot of mints. Just make sure that you plan ahead as these mints take time to dry. Kristin and I challenged each other with these mints. I made red and she made green. We used the same recipe. Then we combined them to give them away. We wanted to see if they tasted different. I think the only difference was the cream cheese.

Take out your cream cheese to let it warm up to room temperature. It will help you pipe them out.

Blend all ingredients together in the mixer. Don’t add too much food color as it might make your mixture too wet. If this happens, add a little more icing sugar.

With a piping bag, make little rosettes.

Both mints tasted pretty similar. The green ones were a little softer and mintier. We let the mints dry over night and then bagged them to give away.

Cream Cheese Mints

http://realwomen.phillycanada.com/recipes/view/4283037/cream-cheese-mints

250 grams Philidelphia Brick Cream Cheese, room temperature
1 teaspoon pure peppermint extract
3 dashes food colouring of choice (don’t put too much or they get soggy)
5 cups powdered sugar

Cream the cream cheese, food color, peppermint extract and powdered sugar together. Line a few baking trays with waxed paper. Use a piping bag and pipe small rosettes. You can try different tips for different effects. Smaller mints will dry quicker, so make sure that you make yours the appropriate size. These make wonderful gifts for Christmas, baby showers, weddings or just a yummy treat. They look really cute in tiny jars or gift bags.

Here is another gift idea. At work we had a four day gift exchange. The first day I gave dehydrated snowman (flour). The second day, I gave reindeer poop (nutella). The third day I gave a blue Easter egg and wrote, “soon the winter blues will disappear”. The fourth day I gave a box of nutella cookies and the recipe for them. Each day was one of the ingredients for making the cookies. All of this was under $25. The recipe for the nutella cookies can be found here.