Homemade Candy Buttons

You know candy buttons?  Those little dots of sugar on strips of white paper?  They're pretty hard to find nowadays and sometimes the ones in the candy shops are fruit flavored which I personally find disgusting.

My family makes cut out cookies every year and I found that the icing we make for the cookies has a similar tastes and the icing also hardens and dissolves in your mouth in a similar way.  It was then that I decided to try and make candy buttons using this icing recipe and it worked out pretty darn well.

Ingredients

• 2 Cups Confectioners Powdered Sugar
• 1 Egg White (or powdered egg whites equal to 1 egg white if you're scared of salmonella)
• 1 tbsp Water
• 1/2 tsp Almond Extract
• Food Coloring

Add the confectioners sugar, egg white, water and almond extract in a medium sized bowl and mix together using a hand mixer or a stand mixer.  Continue to mix until the mixture starts to peak.  If doesn't have to be so stiff that it sticks straight up -- the mixer just has to make thick ripples.  If it isn't peaking, then add a little more confectioners sugar.

Once you've got it mixed, there are two different approaches you can take depending on how many colors you want to make.  One approach is to get as many plastic baggies as colors you want to make.  Evenly distribute the mixture into each plastic bag and then place drops of food coloring into each bag,  Seal the bag and then squish the bag around so that the food coloring is evenly dispersed.  The second option is to just use one bag and then periodically add a different complimenting color to make a new color.  I chose the second version because it was easier for me to do.

Before you go any further, place wax paper on two large cookie sheets.  This is where you will put your buttons and the cookie sheets make it easier to move the buttons around while they're hardening.

Once you've got the food coloring mixed in, snip off a tiny piece of the corner like on a pastry bag.

The corner I snipped was a little too big -- make it as small as possible.

Now it's time to place your dots on the wax paper.  You want the dots to be the size of a pea.

If you chose the second option of mixing the food coloring like I did, you'll want to push the mixture away from the hole in the bag and then open the bag and add another color of food coloring.  I started with green and then added blue and then added yellow so I had 3 different shades of green.  Sometimes I'll start with white then add blue and then add yellow so that I have white, blue and green buttons.

Sorry for the blurriness of the picture

This will be what it looks like when you are done placing the buttons:

You have to wait 36 hours before these fill fully harden -- that's the only downside to these delicious things.