Cream Cheese Mints for Christmas (2024)

These old-fashioned Cream Cheese Mints are a nostalgic Christmas candy recipe made with just 5 simple ingredients!

Old-Fashioned Cream Cheese Mints

These old-fashioned holiday mints are a nostalgic candy recipe from our grandparent’s generation and they are surprisingly easy to make!

While this is one of my “new recipes” for this holiday season, cream cheese mints are actually a classic sweet treat that’s been around for over a century! I’m sure many of us have fond memories of eating too many of these melt-in-your-mouth candies at Christmas time. Especially when we were kids! I could eat a whole bowl of them!

Also called wedding mints (because they are popular at wedding receptions too) or butter mints, they are typically made with cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar, and flavoring. They can be shaped and colored for different occasions, but they may be most popular during the holiday season. But of course, they are so yummy that there is no reason you can’t make them year-round!

Some recipes to makecream cheese mints call for candy molds, and while you can totally use your favorite molds, it’s much easier to make them without a mold because there’s no worry about them sticking inside the mold!

When it comes to the holidays, you can never have too many sweets, and these cream cheese butter mints are no exception to that rule! You might just start a new tradition!

Related: Check out our 20 Best Christmas Candy Recipes here!

Ingredients

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• 8 oz cream cheese, softened
• ¼ cup unsalted butter, softened
• 2 tsp peppermint extract
• 5 cups powdered sugar (plus more as needed)
• Green and red gel food coloring

Helpful Kitchen Tools

• Stand mixeror electric mixer with a large bowl
• Baking Sheet
• Parchment Paper or Wax Paper

Instructions

To Prep: Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and sprinkle with a light coating of powdered sugar. Be sure to use a sheet pan that can fit inside your refrigerator.

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the butter, cream cheese, and mint extract. Add in the powdered sugar one cup at a time, mixing on low speed, until everything is well incorporated and smooth,
2. Divide the cream cheese mixture equally among three bowls. Stir green food coloring into one of the bowls so the cream cheese mixture is a bright green. Repeat the process with one of the other bowls of the butter mint mixture so that it is bright red. Leave the third bowl white and un-dyed. Cover the bowls with plastic wrap and chill for about an hour or until firm.
3. Once the mixture is firm, scoop out a heaping teaspoon and roll into a ball. Place the ball on your prepared pan. Repeat until you’ve rolled all the colors of the cream cheese dough into balls.
4. Once you’ve portioned out all the dough, press the balls into a disc using the tines of a fork, kind of like you would when making peanut butter cookies. You want the mints to be between 1/4″ and 1/2″ thickness so they are bite-sized, but hold their shape. Place the sheet pan back in the fridge and allow to harden for an additional 2-4 hours.

Prep Tips

• Timing: This is a simple recipe to make, with just a few minutes of prep time. Though it does require a bit of planning because the mints will need time to harden in the fridge. So plan for about 4 hours total time. You can speed up the process a bit by using the freezer instead of the fridge for chilling.
• Yield: When we made this recipe we got about 4 dozen bite-size mints. Depending on how big of a spoonful you use for your dough balls, you may end up with slightly more or slightly fewer mints.
• Flavors: We used peppermint extract for a cool and minty holiday treat. However, you could use different extracts or flavorings such as almond extract (one of my favorites), sweet mint extract, vanilla extract, etc.
• Variations: Try using different colors for different occasions! For example, pastels would be perfect for baby showers, graduation parties, or Easter. You could also make wedding mints with the happy couple’s favorite colors.
• Molds: We didn’t use molds for our mints because it is much easier this way. But if you have Christmas candy molds that you love, they can make your mints look extra festive! I recommend rolling your cream cheese balls in powdered sugar before pressing them into the molds. This will help keep them from sticking to the molds. I also recommend using flexible silicone candy molds because you can pop the candies out easier.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why Are My Cream Cheese Mints Sticky?

Usually the cream cheese mixture will feel sticky if it is not cold enough, which is why we chill the dough before rolling and molding it. However, even if you chill the dough, it will start to warm up as we make the mints.

Coat your hands in powdered sugar to help prevent the cream cheese dough from sticking to your hands when you are rolling it into balls. You may also want to coat your fork in powdered sugar when you are flattening the mints so the fork doesn’t stick either.

If the powdered sugar trick stops working, you may need to pop the dough in the freezer for a few minutes to chill it again.

Do Cream Cheese Mints Need To Be Refrigerated?

Your homemade cream cheese mints can be served at room temperature for a couple hours. However, since they are made with cream cheese, these holiday mints do need to be refrigerated for long-term storage. You can keep the mints in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.

More Homemade Candy Recipes To Try

• Old Fashioned Nut and Honey Candy
• Easy Pecan Pralines
• Christmas Candy Sleigh
• Irish Potato Candy
• Peanut Butter Buckeye Candy
• Candy Sushi

Cream Cheese Mint Recipe (Printable Recipe Card)

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