Homemade Altoids Recipe

Altoids are surprisingly simple to make, and you can create any flavor you can think up! All you need are a couple ingredients, some flavored oils, and your imagination.

No longer do you need to be a slave to the Altoids empire! Now you can make curiously strong candies in your own kitchen. I started with peppermint, cinnamon, and sour apple. What's next? Clove? Coffee? Bacon?? The sky is the limit!

These can be stored and gifted in your own personalized tins. How thoughtful!

Step 1: The Secret Ingredients

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These Altoids require few ingredients, but they might not be too easy to get a hold of, so I've provided some easy links:

Gum Paste
Powdered Confectioner's Sugar
Flavored Oils
Citric Acid (to add to flavors to make them sour)
Bubble tea straw (or small round cutter)

I used a liquid citric acid to add to my apple flavor, but that was a disaster! I highly recommend using the powdered form I linked to above.

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You could make convo hearts the same way, you'd just have to figure out how to print them..

I was thinking the same thing this morning! I even have a tiny heart-shaped cutter. And they make these cake decorating pens you could use to write on them!

this **** is so ******* cool

Do you have any suggestions for how to make ginger Altoids? Can you put the actual spice into the gum paste or does it have to be the oil? It would be nice to have some in my purse because I've heard they're good for digestive issues and I've never seen them in a store before. Thank you!

Ginger is great for digestion!! You may use doterra Ginger Oil in the liquid form for great results!! You can order the real Certified Pure Therapeutic Grade GInger Oil from my website. www.doterraoils.rocks We made Wild Orange, Peppermint, Lemon, Lavender, and Cinnamon too!! All are yummy, easy to keep in a handy tin and can be used as a self-care wellness alternative. Email if you have any questions- OilsofVero@gmail.com

The oil would be much easier to work with and honestly for digestive issues the pure root is better for you.

Did you ever find out if you could use fresh ginger? Would you need to dry and pulverize it? Or does it need to be the oil/flavoring?

Alas, I haven't had the time nor the resources to find out. If I ever do, I'll definitely comment here to let you know!

My son and i made these candies today and were thrilled with the finished product. We didn't have a bubble straw, so we used a funnel to cut out our candies and a straw to push the out of the end of the funnel onto parchment paper to dry. it worked great.

Update Flavored Oils Link the one you have gives a 404 error messagehttp://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=flavored+oils

Thanks!

So I know that I'm a little late to this thread.. however I've been trying to come up with a way to make my own Xylitol mints. Apparently 2tsp of xylitol a day will seriously keep the dentist away.. for those curious.. please look at the links below. I"m excited to try this, but I'd like to incorporate xylitol into this recipe. Any thoughts on the best way to do it? Ideally, I'd like to make it so that eating 3-5 mints throughout the day would end up having 2tsp of xylitol. http://www.drellie.com/Xylitol.php http://www.xylitol.org/dental-benefits-of-xylitol http://www.healingteethnaturally.com/xylitol-dental-care-frequently-asked-questions-faq-4.html

You could just make your own gum paste with xylitol!!http://www.justapinch.com/recipes/dessert/other-dessert/gum-paste-simple.html

I am just wondering how many mints this recipe yields? Like how manes mints would you say you have following this recipe?

It's also easy to just roll the dough into small balls (think coke balls) and it's less icing sugar and time needing to punch out and reshape dough. I love the sound of the other shaping ideas though! Take care :-)

These are really cool! I had never thought you would make them that way...

alright quick question how many mints on average would a set of 100g make and what have you found to be the best flavours? thanks for the answer in advance

Oof, I don't remember how many. I'm going to take a stab and say 50, since that seemed like what I was seeing in the picture. I loved the cinnamon ones the best. Sour apple was the group favorite though!

thank you so much i will have to try and make them myself and the bad part of sour apple is i would not be sure if i would be allergic or not because i have a weird allergy to apple candy but not apples keep up the great work on the ibles though

Yes, you would probably have an allergic reaction the the flavoring. What about sour cherry or sour grape?

nothing actually just sour apple.

Those look like ecstasy pills.

Fantastic! I'm going to make Cinnamon!

Ooooooh thanks so much i love alto ids!

I wanna try these but I'm not sure where to get flavored oil...Could you find it at a cake shop? Like if someone wanted to flavor fondant or something?

I've just updated to include links to find everything!

Massive Altoid?

Okay, the biggest question I have about this is, of course, how are the taste and texture? I mean, in a blind test, would I be able to tell which was an Altoid and which was homemade? Is there a significant difference, or is this a rather uncannily awesome recipe? Because as much as I adore the 'toids, it IS rather an expensive addiction. I noticed that on the Altoids tin, their ingredients are sugar, gum Arabic, artificial flavors, gelatin, and dye. Do you have an opinion on the use of gelatin or doesn't it make a significant difference?

If you decide to try making your own gum paste recipe to do these, than the gelatin will come into play. Since the 'toids have been around for so long they didn't have some of the things used now in gum paste recipes. The first recipe listed here http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080906001555AAfNYFT is the one I use, and while the texture isn't spot on for altoids it's pretty dang close. Enough so that unless friends ask me (or I get lazy and just roll little balls of the things since I suck on them anyway) they don't always know the difference. One of the perks of using a powdered gum paste mix like Wilton's makes or making your own is you can use tea or coffee to make the stuff, and that gives you more options of flavors. I like to make chai ones.

This has been on my radar for a while, and was one of my first <a href="http://www.instructables.com/id/My-30-days-of-instructables/">30 days of instructables</a> projects. I used the gum paste powder and the proportions here (started with good ol' peppermint). Took a good two weeks to dry out properly (GA humidity?), was INTENSELY strong, just the way we like them. Was surprised that gum paste is almost entirely powdered sugar. Seems like the next step would be to make your own gum paste first!

thanks clibanarius!

Do it! Glad it worked out for you. Your 30 days of Instructables is brilliant! I absolutely love it.

I've never tried Altoids, what is the texture I am aiming to get for these? Chewy? Hard? Something in between? Thanks.

Altoids are hard and, well, a bit chalky but in a good way!

hard. really thats all i can say,.

<blockquote>100g gum paste : 1 dram flavoring</blockquote> Is that a misspelling, meant to be "1 gram flavoring"? As in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gram">gram</a>, unit of mass? Or is it really a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dram_%28unit%29">dram</a>? I only ask because both amounts are small and not outside the realm of possibility. :)

;) A dram is a legitimate unit of measurement. I believe a dram is equivalent to an 8th of a fluid ounce? Please do correct me if I'm wrong. :)

Hi there, yeah I knew that, but I've never bought flavouring and didn't realise it was actually sold in drams. Other than this instructable, I've only ever heard "dram" referring to a "dram of whiskey" though evidently there's a world of cake-makers and sweet-makers that still use it! :) I guess it's one of those archaic units of measurement that persists due to one particular usage, like furlongs in horse-racing.

In cooking a dram is equal to approximately 3/4 tsp.

Close but alas no cookie According to my "converts any measure to any other measure" chart  1 Dram = 27.34375 Grains                1.771845 Grams                0.0625 Ounces There are also troy drams should you wish to measure precious metals. 1 Dram (troy) = .1371429 Ounces                          .125 Ounces (troy) I know, way more than anyone wants to know, but hey that's the way my head works.

I do mean dram. It's the full amount of oil as commonly sold.

So basically, according to wikipedia, you could just put 3.5mL of the oil in?

COOL!! can u make cinnamon altoids.

Couldn't you just roll the Altoids "dough" to the desired width and cut it with a knife? I think you could waste less dough that way (or at least save you the trouble of molding the "dough" back into cut-able size).

I had the same thought but without having made these (yet) I would be concerned that the dough is not dense enough to support a knife cutting it, unless that knife was extremely thin or extremely sharp. You might end up with squashed shapes simliar to these: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/After_dinner_mints.jpg or if you rotate the rolled dough 90 degrees per cut you could get e triangular sharpe like these: http://www.thesweetiestall.com/chocolate%20mints.JPG I suspect that using scissors will enhance the look.

Thank you on the clarification. I didn't know the dough wasn't all that strong and couldn't support a knife.

A pizza cutter will probably work easily.

just when i was running out of ways to use my altoids tins, now i can just fill them back up

Years ago, at a rubber stamp fair, one of the vendors was using the stamps and food coloring to stamp lollipops before they hardened. You'd just need a brand new set of stamps. The silicon ones seem to me to be the better choice when compared to the rubber ones, but I'm just estimating here. Suzanne in Orting, WA

You never did answer the question posed above about how close these match in consistency to the real deal. I bring it up because I am curious as well. Also can you mold them into different shapes using chocolate molds? I wanted to make some in different shapes as party favors or something like that.