1 pkg (or recipe) of Gum Paste

Powdered Sugar (just enough for dusting your surface & for tossing the mints in)

Essential Oils or Flavored Oils (I used 3-4 drops per egg-sized portion of gum paste. More if you want stronger flavor! Mine were about average.)

Food coloring – just a tiny bit is needed! (optional)

Citric Acid for “sour” flavors – I didn’t use. (optional)

Plastic straw (the fatter the better)

I figured the gum paste might prove challenging to find…but I found it in the cake decorating section of my local Walmart. The rest of the ingredients you probably already have on hand.

Start out by pulling off a piece of the gum paste about the size of an egg and start kneading it. It’s pretty hard at first, but the warmth from your hands will soften it quickly. This is when I added the food coloring and flavoring. (I forgot to take a picture of adding the essential oils for flavoring.) I decided to use a latex glove the hubster had in his BBQ stuff so that the food coloring didn’t stain my fingers…but in hindsight I don’t think I really needed it. I also ended up using a just a few drops of regular cooking oil to help soften up the gum paste and help mix in the coloring and flavoring better.

Once the color has been worked all the way through the “dough”…go ahead and sprinkle a little powdered sugar on your working surface and roll it out about 1/8″ thick. Now you can start “punching out” mints with the straw. I happened to have these “fat” straws that I found at my grocery store, but I also tried it with the skinnier straws and it worked just fine that way too. Anything that will cut a small circle will do. Come to think of it…you could even use a pizza cutter or a knife and make them square-shaped.

Once you have all your mints cut out, toss them with a little more powdered sugar to keep them from sticking together and let dry for at least 48 hours. The longer you let the dry…the harder/crunchier they will be…like a good mint SHOULD be.