The Type Of Milk You Need For Perfect Homemade Peppermint Patties

Nothing says "Happy holidays," "Thanks for coming by for dinner," or "snack time" quite like a tasty stack of peppermint patties. While you've probably sampled a number of them throughout your life, when it comes to this sticky, sweet treat, nothing can compare to the homemade variety. A copycat York Peppermint Patties recipe is made rather simply with just a handful of ingredients, and going the extra mile to whip them up yourself is a worthy effort. That's, at least in part, because the center is so perfectly gooey thanks to sweetened condensed milk.

A favorite add-in for coffee or topping for snowballs, condensed milk is just cow's milk that has been reduced via evaporation (typically by 60%) and heavily sweetened. As a result of the heating process required for evaporation and the addition of sugar, the milk takes on a silky, almost syrupy texture, but thicker. This — along with its obviously delightful sweetness and creaminess — makes it the ideal base for the center of a peppermint patty, which is meant to toe the line between gooey and runny.

Condensed milk acts as the foundation for peppermint patties' filling, but the addition of a few drops of peppermint extract really gets the ball rolling. And while that canned liquid gold certainly has a thick and luxurious consistency, your patties wouldn't be able to take form or be chocolate coated without the addition of powdered sugar, which transforms the minty milk into a dough that can be frozen and rolled out before being cut into circles with a small round cookie cutter. You can even customize your peppermint patties for the perfect holiday gift using festively shaped mini cookie cutters. Alternatively, the dough can be rolled into balls and flattened out with your hand before being dunked in chocolate. 

While it may be hard not to eat the whole batch at once, if you've got any leftover, peppermint patties made with condensed milk store beautifully in the freezer. Thanks to the large amount of sugar mixed into the evaporated milk, condensed milk is incapable of completely freezing. That means you can eat your peppermint patties right out of the freezer without the texture being compromised too much!