Cream Cheese Wedding Mints

Seriously this is the only good picture I took.  I am even ashamed of that.

Okay don't judge this post by it's title.  If you do you will miss out on one yummy treat!

  I have heard about these mints a few times, and then a little while ago the ladies on a board I chat on had brought them up.  I had not heard of them before that board, and from what I could gather in parts of the states they are the one thing that every celebration has to have.  Like their name, they are for weddings, you make them in the bridal colours.  Usually in a flower and leaf shape, to be all wedding like.  And apparently no party is a real party without these.

At this point, I was thinking it looked gross.  But I kept telling myself, it's just a big batch of really thick cream cheese icing.

  Now I say they are from the states, but I googled and there looked to be a few different versions, all with slightly different recipes.  I think I narrowed it down to Nebraska being the centre of it all.  And by that I mean I saw the name Nebraska and just stopped looking any farther.  So I may be totally wrong.  I don't know, but I have been wrong before.  Like once before.

I had visions of making all these different shapes and stuff.  Then I gave up and did just pumpkins.

  So in looking it up all the recipes had the same basic ingredients. Cream cheese, icing sugar and mint.  Some called for vanilla, others for some butter and some even left the mint out and used other flavors.  So I did what I always do and did the easiest thing I could.

  And these mints are usually shaped or even rolled into pillow like mint shapes.  I even read that there are special molds for these.  And since here in Canada they have probably never heard of these, I just used what I had.

  I was going to make tiny little mints, but then once I mixed it all together and noticed I had a lot more dough than I expected,I used a bigger mold.  I also like mint, like a lot, so I wanted them bigger.

That is a ball o' wedding mint stuff, in a bowl of sugar.  I know, amazing right?

  So here you go, how this Canadian girl tried cream cheese wedding mints, and is now going to make them again.  Maybe.

 Cream Cheese Wedding Mints
I sort of just went with the least amount of stuff, so it's by me, sort of:

-1 8oz block of cream cheese
-2 kg of icing sugar, I did not measure, I just used the whole bag I had, sorry
-1/2 TSP peppermint/ mint extract ( you can add more or less, I might up it to 3/4 TSP next time)
-food colouring paste if you like

See I have all these super cute silicon baking things, and I swear I never use them until after the holiday they are for.  But this time I was way ahead of the game.

  So basically you mix it all together.  I started by creaming the cheese, then adding the mint and food colouring.  I used my scrapper paddle to start, but then switched over to the metal paddle as this is one thick dough.  Once it was almost all together, the machine was having a hard time, I took it out and mixed it by hand.

This is all I got out of that batch, but seriously these are huge mints.

  Now this was a huge pain in the butt for me.  I have these nail stickers on that are sort of flaking off, but not enough that I want to take them off.  But enough that I didn't want to chance it, so I had to wear plastic gloves, and the ones I have are really loose, so it was a pain.  Anyway, I started kneading it all on parchment, but got annoyed and just did the rest on the table, until it was all together, it was still a little sticky, but not that bad.

  So I got started, set Pork Chop up with his own little bit to do.  And then he started screaming "this is cheese!!!! I can smell the cheese!!!"  Which is not as funny as it sounds when the whole table was covered in stuff and he was doing this, like the "cheese" was going to kill him.  I had told him it would be like play d'oh, well it wasn't so he wanted nothing more to do with it.  This is why I cannot bond with him over baking, unless he can sniff the flour, he is out.

  And just so you know, I had talked this up for a few days, how we were going to make play d'oh you can eat and how fun it would all be.

  Yeah well, whatever, I give up!

I really liked the skulls, those in plain white would be really neat.  And that blob to the right was half a bird.  The tail broke off, so I ate it.  And I even tried to do some super man and bat man ones, because if there is one thing I know.  I need to justify the comic molds I bought.

  So according to what I read you take a bit of the dough and roll it into a ball, then roll the ball in regular white sugar and push it into the mold you want to use.  They usually use one mold and pop the mint out right away.  Well my mints were big and I figured they needed a few minutes to set up before popping them out.  So I used a silicon mold I have, it is pumpkins and I bought it to make cake balls.  I will soon, I promise.  Anyway I filled the whole mold then popped them all out and put them on parchment in a cake pan in a single layer.

  Now from reading some people leave them out to dry anywhere from an hour to forever, like they never refrigerate them.  I don't know how I feel about that, as there is cheese in them.  So I let them set to dry for about 1 hour or so and then packed them up and into the fridge.  I am paranoid that way.

  I also tried a few smaller molds and what not.  I found then too detailed to be any good for this.  So I stuck with the larger ones.  I like easy people.

I don't know how cool Bat man and Super man would feel being immortalized in cheese and sugar, but I bet they would love it.

  So I ate one, and I was all " I  don't know how I feel about that"  I mean you can sort of taste the cream cheese, it was almost like a really dense cream cheese icing, but with a hint of mint.  So I ate another, then another.  And then I had diner, then I ate another.  I have no control.  But I think they were really good.

  So the next day I took them to both works.  I also had one for myself, and I liked it even more when it was firmer and cold.  So I think they were so good, but I might up the mint just a tiny bit.  Also when I gave them to the elevator guys one of the guys said he had those mints before in the states, because I had to explain what they were. He said he liked them, but you know they could just be being nice.

  And my other job, they seemed to be trying to be nice and not say what they really thought.  I said I want to know, so they said it was not one of the better things I have made.  So I said I may have to dip them in chocolate and try again, that sounded good to them, so we will see.  And just so you know it is like 3 weeks later and they are all almost still there, so I have to throw them out.

  Not one of my better treats.  Oh well, at least I tried.


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