Cream Cheese Pillows

For a special occasion, you may want some butter mints, but can't find fresh ones, or don't want to pay a fortune for a specific color for your wedding reception, spring party, or whatever. My candy-making cookbook says butter mints are the trickiest recipe in the book. But if you are not a whiz at candy making, cream cheese pillow with mint flavoring are a good substitute for butter mints, and are one of the easiest recipes I've found for candy.

Cream Cheese Pillows

1 (8 oz.) pkg. cream cheese

1 tsp. flavored extract: mint, orange, lemon, etc.

Food coloring

6-8 cups powdered sugar

Beat cream cheese until soft. 

If you want all the candies to be one flavor, add the flavoring to the cream cheese. If you want more than one flavor, add the flavors later. Butter flavor added along with another flavor adds depth to the taste of the candy.

Also, if you want all the candies to be one color, add the food coloring to the cream cheese mixture. If you want more than one color, add the coloring later. You can make all the candies mint, and then have different colors, or whatever you like.

Add 6 cups of powdered sugar gradually, one cup at a time. If your mixer can't handle the thick mixture, you may need to knead the sugar in by hand.

Knead in up to 2 more cups of powdered sugar until the candy is not sticky. You can put the powdered sugar on your counter, table, parchment paper, or plate, and knead it into the candy like flour into bread.

At this point, if you decided to have different colors or flavors, divide the candy into equal portions and add the food coloring and/or flavor to each portion. 

Knead the dough using powdered sugar to keep it from sticking to the surface, until the color is even all the way through.

Roll the dough into long snakes. If your dough is not too sticky, you won't need more powdered sugar to keep it from sticking. 

Cut the candy into square pillow shapes with a blunt knife. 

Move them to a sheet of parchment or wax paper to dry. 

Dry them overnight on the counter before placing them in the fridge for storage.

Makes about 6 cups of Cream Cheese Pillows.

Melinda's Notes: These keep in the fridge for several weeks, so they can be made in advance for any occasion. Yum. I also added butter flavor to the mint flavor, because I like how they taste.