I started out this week with a post titled 10 Foods Worth Doing Homemade which talked a little bit about whether it’s worth it or not to make certain foods from scratch. So it was rather interesting timing that in this same week I came across a recipe for homemade Altoids. Homemade Altoids ?? Are they serious?? Is there any way that cutting out little teeny tiny mints could be worth it?
In case you’re not familiar with Altoids, they are the “curiously strong” mints sold in the cute little tins. Altoids are my favorite mint, and I am never without those things in my purse. That’s why I could not help myself. I had to check out the recipe for homemade Altoids.
The three main ingredients of this recipe are gum paste, confectioners sugar, and mint flavored oil. The complete recipe is at the Instructables website. Here’s a link for you:
= = = = = >>>> Homemade Altoids Recipe
You knead the gum paste with the powdered sugar, flavor it with the mint oil (or other flavor of your choice), then roll it out. You then cut them out into little circles. The recipe says to use a bubble tea straw for the cutting part, whatever that is. Never heard of such of thing, have you?
 |
| Ingredients pictured on the Instructables website |
Well I was curious enough that I was going to give this a try. I made a trip to Michaels Craft Store to look for the gum paste. I was able to find it in their cake decorating section, but was quite surprised at it’s high price of $9.99 for a tiny one pound bag! That was the deal breaker for me. And on top of that I did not see any mint flavor oil either.
I happened to have a brand new package of Altoids in my purse that I bought for 99 cents. It contains 78 mints. (Yes, I actually counted them just now . . ).
So I guess I’m going with my first reaction. It’s really not worth it to make your own Altoids. Maybe if you’re into cake decorating and had some gum paste laying around that you didn’t know how to use up, well then you might be a likely candidate to give these a try.
For the rest of us, however, I think we’d be making better use of our time and money to just watch for a good sale.
I'm Bev and I love to share ideas for living a more creative and resourceful lifestyle with homemade alternatives we can make for ourselves. 
Great post Bev! You're right. Some things are just not worth it to do homemade.
A couple of thoughts….I wonder if gum paste could be made home made. Also, I think instead of using a straw to cut the mints I would cut tiny squares just using a knife…..
You're right . . . using a knife would probably be less time consuming.
I've seen recipes for homemade mints that are larger and are usually a mix of powdered sugar and butter. That sounds more economical than buying the gum paste.
Just a quick math run through… According to the label, an Altoids tin contains 1.76OZ of mints. 1 pound of gum paste equals 9 Altoids tins worth of mints. That's $27.00 worth of Altoids at my local Walgreens. The rest of the ingredients should last through multiple pounds of gum paste since they are used in minute amounts. Add in the fact that you can customize the flavor and color and shape… making plans to do some homemade right now!
I note that your math run through is based on weight. I'm wondering if the weight of the homemade Altoids is truly equal to the weight of ready made Altoids. If one tin contained 78 mints, and if you are going to make the equivalent of 9 tins, you would need to end up with about 708 mints. I'm not sure when I look at the size of a 1 lb pkg of gum paste that it would in fact yield 708 mints. Interesting to think about!
I've been planning to make these for a while, and homemade Altoids are actually considerably cheaper than buying them at a store.
Each Altoid can has 50g worth of Altoids, and costs $2 each.
The bag of gum paste, which contains 450g of gum paste, is equivalent to 9 boxes of Altoids. This costs $10.
The Instructables recipe calls for a dram of flavoring per 100g. A dram is 1/16 oz. For the whole bag of gum paste, that's less than a third of an ounce. I bought the peppermint oil for $3.11 an ounce, which amounts to about $1 spent on the flavoring.
Altogether, you spend $11 for nine boxes' worth of Altoids. Compared to store-bought, that's $7 saved.