For those who enjoy a light and refreshing treat, especially the little mints offered at restaurants and parties, these keto cream cheese mints are a perfect, guilt-free alternative. These no-bake mints are soft, creamy, buttery, and bursting with peppermint flavor, all while boasting zero net carbs per serving.
Why Choose Keto Cream Cheese Mints?
These mints are not only delicious but also cater to specific dietary needs:
- Sugar-Free: Made with sugar alternatives like Swerve confectioners’ sweetener or a blend of powdered Monkfruit and Erythritol, these mints allow you to indulge without the sugar crash.
- Low Carb: Perfect for those following a ketogenic or low-carb lifestyle.
- Easy to Make: With a handful of ingredients and minimal preparation time, these mints are a breeze to whip up.
- Customizable: Easily adaptable with various flavor extracts and food colorings to suit any occasion.
Essential Ingredients and Considerations
The key to exceptional keto cream cheese mints lies in the quality and selection of ingredients.
Cream Cheese
Picking cream cheese isn’t an overly hard task, but care should be taken to ensure you select a good quality cream cheese. When choosing a cream cheese, always be sure to check the carbohydrate content. Generally, cream cheese should contain no more than 1 gram of carbohydrates per ounce. If there is more than this, the cheese may contain extra ingredients or fillers. Depending on your area and what is available in your store brand, you might be forced to choose brand name cream cheese. It’s crucial to use full-fat, brick-style cream cheese, not the spreadable kind from a tub. Soften the cream cheese to room temperature for easier mixing. Watching fat content on a keto/low-carb diet isn’t a concern. When choosing a cream cheese for this recipe, never opt for a low-fat version. In fact, not only is there more sugar, there is often more ingredients as well. As you’ve probably seen at some point in your grocery store visits, there is a cheese packaged and sold alongside cream cheese. What you don’t see at first, however, is that this cheese has a lower fat content and higher water content than cream cheese.
Sweetener
A powdered sweetener is a must for this no-bake recipe. Granular sweeteners will result in a gritty texture. If you only have granulated sweetener, add it to a food processor and pulse until powdered texture performs. Powdered Monkfruit/Erythritol sweetener is highly recommended for the best taste. Swerve can be used as an alternative.
Read also: Easy Low-Carb Cheese Crackers
Extract
Pure peppermint extract is essential for that classic minty flavor. Avoid using diluted or blended extracts, as they may require larger quantities and can water down the mixture. You should use ½ to 1 teaspoon depending on how minty you would like the flavor to be. I would use a ½ teaspoon first, then do a taste test and add a little more to taste.
Butter
The butter must be completely softened to ensure it is mixed well with the remaining ingredients.
Optional Ingredients
- Food Coloring: Gel food coloring is ideal for achieving vibrant colors without altering the consistency of the mints. You can make these without the food colors as they are only optional and for decorative purposes and not required. Feel free to use different colors for different occasions-these are easily customizable.
- Granular Sweetener: Granular Monkfruit/Erythritol Sweetener is optional but I like it to coat the mints as it gives them that sparkly, glowy coating.
- Sugar-Free Sprinkles: For added decoration without the added sugar. You can make your own sugar-free sprinkles!
- Flavor Extracts: Vanilla, almond, lemon, or orange extract can be added for a twist on the classic peppermint flavor.
Step-by-Step Recipe
Here’s how to create these delectable keto cream cheese mints:
- Combine Ingredients: In a large bowl, beat softened cream cheese and butter with an electric mixer until smooth. Add softened cream cheese, softened butter, powdered sweetener, and mint extract to a mixing bowl. Using a hand mixer or stand mixer, mix the ingredients until smooth and creamy. Scrape sides of the bowl with a rubber scraper and mix again until combined.
- Sweeten and Flavor: With the mixer on low, gradually add 1 cup powdered sugar then mix in the rest along with the peppermint extract.
- Color (Optional): Separate the dough into 2 bowls or more depending on if using food coloring and how many colors of food color will be used. If using food color, then add one to two drops of color to each bowl. Stir the color into the dough. For darker colors that use more food coloring, you may have to add a bit more powdered sugar to keep the mixture from becoming gummy.
- Chill: Cover and place the bowl or bowls into the refrigerator and chill for at least two hours until the dough is not so sticky. You can also refrigerate the dough itself for about 10min before rolling to make the process easier.
- Shape: Remove the bowls from fridge and using your hands pinch off small amounts of the dough and roll between your palms to form small ½ tablespoon sized dough balls. Roll 1 teaspoon dough into small balls and place on parchment paper. If your dough still seems very sticky when trying to roll balls, add a little more powdered sweetener OR covered your hands lightly in powdered sweetener. I highly recommend you make the mints small as they are quite sweet and as the recipe says, they are supposed to be like mints!
- Flatten: Place these balls onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Dip a fork into powdered sugar and gently press on top to flatten each ball. To avoid ridges from a fork, press the mints flat using the bottom of a glass.
- Chill Again: Place the baking sheets into the fridge to chill again for one hour. Set fully: These mints are meant to be firm.
- Serve: Plate and serve! OR my favourite, freeze overnight and serve frozen. Let dry 2 to 3 hours at room temperature.
Tips for Success
- Softening Cream Cheese: Softening cream cheese for this dip is incredibly easy.
- Consistency: If the mixture is still sticky add a little more powdered sugar. It should be the consistency of playdough. The dough should be quite thick kind of like cottage cheese.
- Flavor Intensity: Adjust the amount of peppermint extract to your preference.
- Molds: You can also press the dough into molds if you have some.
- Chocolate Coating: Another fun idea is to dip them half way in melted white or dark chocolate. You could also add sprinkles for the holidays.
Storage Instructions
Storing your mints is easy! Simply place them onto parchment paper in an airtight container and place them into the refrigerator. The mints should easily keep for a week or more for all of your eating/snacking purposes. Store mints in a covered container in the refrigerator up to 1 month or in the freezer up to 3 months.
Serving Suggestions
These tasty mints are great for a sweet treat or a little “pick me up” in the middle of the day. These cream cheese mints are often in pastel colors and called wedding mints or buttermints. These make the perfect little treats because they are sugar-free, low carb, and low calorie. These are the cutest little sweet morsels that will bring back all the memories of cream cheese mints.
Read also: Keto Calorie Counting: A Detailed Guide
Nutritional Information (Per Mint)
Serving: 1mint, Calories: 47kcal, Carbohydrates: 10g, Protein: 0.1g, Fat: 1g, Saturated Fat: 1g, Polyunsaturated Fat: 0.04g, Monounsaturated Fat: 0.3g, Trans Fat: 0.01g, Cholesterol: 3mg, Sodium: 9mg, Potassium: 3mg, Sugar: 9g, Vitamin A: 37IU, Calcium: 2mg, Iron: 0.01mg Nutrition provided is an estimate.
Recommended Tools
- Hand Mixer - We’ve said it before, but it’s always worth a repeat. A good hand mixer can truly change your life in the kitchen. Whisks and elbow grease is great, but a hand mixer can make short work of just about any mixing task. If you don’t have one as part of your kitchen utensils, there’s no time like now to fix that! For this recipe I used my cute kitchen aid hand mixer.
- Stand Mixer - A stand mixer can really make light of a lot of work. Unlike a hand mixer, stand mixers can handle a greater volume of ingredients.
- Food Scale - My trusty food scale that you've already probably heard me rave about a million and one times in my recipes. This little buddy is my longest-running kitchen tool and it goes EVERYWHERE with me.
Read also: Magnesium Supplements for Keto