Mostly Vegan Peppermint Patties

My kids love what they call “Yorks”. When I was a kid, these candies had a full name: York Peppermint Patties” but at some point the name got shorter and when they get them in their Halloween basket the name just says York. I was really surprised when I tasted Kendal Mint Cake for the first time when I visited the Lake District several decades ago how much it tasted like the inside of a York. 

At any rate, my youngest wanted to put on a comedy show, so she made her own advertising (for our house and my inlaws’ next door) and wanted to make refreshments to serve her audience. We didn’t have enough eggs for her to use and she immediately remembered a recipe she’d seen in a book called Classic Candy by Abigail Gehring that she’d found through Libby (the electronic reading app that libraries use). Happily, the book was available for checkout and she was able to make her “Yorks”. 

The fact that they were advertised as egg- and dairy-free was a surprise to me. Much like my Vegan Mint Meltaways, I had no idea that the original *wouldn’t* be vegan. I assume that other recipes may use egg white or something. I call the recipe mostly vegan because you do use honey, which some vegans do not eat. 

I was shocked both by how easy this recipe was and how delicious the results were. It’s basically a perfect combination of fat, sugar and salt (plus chocolate!) so I recommend you make the patties nice and small because a little goes a long way. Next time we make them, we’re going to try putting the filling into the small silicone heart molds that my eldest bought a few years back. I did help her get the coconut oil out of the jar and did a little bit of extra blending for her, but an 8 year old can nearly make them by herself. She and her teen sister happily enrobed them after the freezing stage.

We’ll definitely add these to our ever-growing repertoire of vegan, gluten-free candy. The only change I made to Gehring’s recipe was to use weights for the honey and coconut oil as I really hate measuring them into cups and then having to transfer them to a bowl. Direct weigh into the bowl works better for me. We also used dark chocolate bars instead of chocolate chips.

INGREDIENTS

216g coconut oil, solid, or 1 cup. We used triple refined so there was no coconut flavor

170g honey, any kind you like

1 tsp peppermint extract

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp table salt

6 oz (approx) chocolate, either chocolate chips or chocolate bars. We strongly prefer dark chocolate, at least 72% cocoa but use what you like best

2 tsp coconut oil (optional to give the chocolate more snap)

DIRECTIONS

1. Put all the ingredients through the salt in a medium bowl and use a hand mixer, stand mixer or immersion blender to mix together until very smooth and creamy. We started with the hand mixer and got the remaining lumps out with the immersion blender
2. Once the filling is smooth, taste and adjust the levels of peppermint, vanilla and salt
3. Portion out the patties onto a lined baking tray in quarter-sized circles or mini muffin cups half full or small silicone molds and then freeze at least 10 minutes but I prefer more like 30 minutes. You don’t want your filling to melt when you’re enrobing it!
4. Near the end of the freezing time, melt the chocolate in double boiler or the microwave then add the coconut oil. If you want to temper the chocolate, go for it, but we do not bother
5. When the chocolate is melted, remove the filling from the freezer and coat each piece entirely in melted chocolate then place on a lined tray—you can reuse the same one if you used it for freezing the filling
6. After you’ve enrobed all of the patties, place the tray in the freezer for another 10-30 minutes to set then transfer to an air-tight container and keep refrigerated for best (least melty) results