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

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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Step 2: Measurements!

In researching other people's attempts at making Altoids, I discovered a surprising dearth of actual measurements to use! Everyone seems to just "wing it." But that's not good enough for me! Of course, you can (and should!) adjust to your personal preferences, but here are the measurements I had the most success with:

100g gum paste : 1 dram flavoring

The powdered sugar is used to keep the dough from getting sticky, so you really just need a sprinkling of it.

Step 3: Adding the Oil

Because I wasn't sure in the beginning how much oil : paste I would need, I used an eyedropper to parse out the oil slowly.

This is still a good suggestion.

If you try to add too much oil at once, you'll have a sloppy mess on your hands.

So remember to incorporate the oil into the paste gradually, and keep tasting the dough so you can adjust it accordingly!

Do the same if you are using citric acid to adjust how sour you want your candies to be.

Step 4: Kneading

Knead the oil into the paste with your hands. You can add some powdered sugar if it gets too sticky, but the more powdered sugar you add, the more your flavor will become diluted.

Use the powdered sugar mainly to keep the paste from sticking to your counter surface and a rolling pin.

Roll out the dough to about 1/8" thickness. If you don't have a rolling pin, a round bottle will do!

Step 5: Cutting

A bubble tea straw is the perfect size for cutting out Altoids! If you don't have one, improvise. Look for something of a similar size - maybe even a bit of copper pipe? You can really make them any shape you want, so don't feel limited.

After you've cut out all the shapes you can from your "dough", you can re-roll it out and cut more!

Step 6: Drying Time

Toss your cut candies with a bit of powdered sugar to keep them from sticking together.

Let them air-dry for several days to achieve the proper texture.

Here I've got my three prototypes drying separately - peppermint, cinnamon, and sour apple. Next I might try chocolate, chocolate-mint, sour cherry - who knows. It's so fun and easy to do, I might never stop!