The Irish Potato Candy Famine

St. Patrick's Day is one of the toughest holidays for me, culinarily-speaking. Being one-eighth Irish, we dutifully cook our corned beef (a.k.a. New England boiled dinner), although sans cabbage in deference to my cruciferous vegetable problem. That main meal poses little difficulty.

The difficulty is what else to serve with it, or, rather, what to serve to two elementary-school children. For instance, the last couple of years I've had my eye on a chocolate-Guinness pudding. Serves 6. Maybe Will and I can eat three apiece, but I think that recipe is going to have to wait a bit longer. So will others of its kind.

So in the quest for suitable Irish-related sweets, I remembered potato candy. This seems to come in many forms, but the basis is the same: a large mashed potato, an insane amount of confectioner's sugar, and lots of coconut. Will once made a chocolate-coated version, which are called Needhams and apparently pretty popular in Maine. These weren't so bad (I think), and were what I had at the back mind when I set out to make this batch, which I planned to shape into balls and roll in cocoa powder.

There would be some chilling involved, so I planned to start them the night before. Unfortunately, I also had to go to a meeting, so I asked Will to peel and boil a large potato for me to mash when I got home. What neither of us expected was the meeting dragged for more than two hours and by the time I got home, my potato was pretty cold... but still mashable.

This was OK, or so I thought, because the recipe I was using said it was crucial to let the mashed potato cool completely before mixing in the sugar. Unfortunately, what it also said was to mash in some butter while it was still hot. So we melted some butter and mashed it into our cooled potato. It still seemed pretty cool, so Will went ahead and mixed in the first four cups of powdered sugar and a little vanilla.

We got an interesting soupy texture at first... and it thickened a little bit, but not a lot. We were supposed to be achieving a slightly stiff mixture we could shape into balls. No such luck. So Will and I added more sugar. Slightly stiffer, but nowhere near what we expected and neither of us wanted to add any more sugar. We tried mixing in the coconut and it firmed up a little more, but was still much too pourable.

Decision-making time. This recipe was not working. Will and I started tossing around ideas. Add still more sugar? No. Pour it into a pan, try chilling it, smear with peanut butter and roll it up like they do in the South? No. Pour it in a pan, try chilling it, and pour melted chocolate on it kind of like a Needham? Yeah.

THE VERDICT: Nil.
    I shouldn't say that, really, because I think something threw off the consistency with this batch. It could have been the potato (a russet, I believe), it could have been our misstep with the butter or the inclusion of butter itself. Chilling helped. So did pouring a a cup of melted chocolate chips over the top, although two cups would've been better.
     As for flavor, this was a plus. Keith and Alex both liked it, because "it tastes like Nanaimo bars." Will thought it tasted kind of like Mounds bars, but wasn't crazy about the amount of powdered sugar we had to put into it. It's possible I'll try it again, but then again, maybe not.