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.

O Canada

It's an emerging tradition in our household that we celebrate the start of the Olympics with food from the host country. This officially started in 2008, with sesame noodles to kick off the Beijing Olympics. I don't remember doing anything specific for Torino in 2006, but then again, we eat a lot of pizza and pasta so it's possible.

So here it is, 2010, the Winter Games are in Vancouver, and I have no idea what would be considered Canadian food. The problem, I think, is that like the United States, Canada is a melting pot of cultures and it is as hard to identify a quintessentially Canadian dish as it is to name one that is strictly American. To make it more difficult, I wanted something from the western provinces to keep as close to the Vancouver theme as possible. This ruled out the only dishes I could think of -- tourtiere and maple syrup pie -- because they were from Quebec and too far east.

After trawling the Internet, I came to a few conclusions: our entree might have to rely on indigenous ingredients (something like bison burgers); fiddlehead ferns are probably unattainable in the Mid-Atlantic states; and if I wanted a truly Canadian dish, I needed to focus on desserts. Desserts like Nanaimo bars, a three-layer no-bake treat that not only originated in British Columbia, but made an Ontarian friend's mouth water when I mentioned I was thinking of making them. Maybe this was a quintessentially Canadian dish.



I started out crushing some graham crackers -- I needed 10 to get the required 1 1/4 c. -- and then chopping the almonds in the food processor. Chopping nuts is always tricky, because if I go too fast I end up with nut paste, but careful pulsing yielded excellent results this time.

I also added a cup of shredded coconut and set it aside.






Then I melted a stick of butter, 1/4 c. sugar, and 5 Tbsp. of cocoa powder in my makeshift double boiler. I don't own a real double boiler, so I usually stack a bowl or a small saucepan on top of another small saucepan and it does the trick. Eventually, I'll get a real one, but this works pretty well.

Next, I needed to combine the melted chocolate with a beaten egg. I followed the advice of The Eclectic Cook, who suggested adding the chocolate to the egg instead of the other way around to avoid curdling. I was still a little worried about whether the egg would be heated enough, so I added a little melted chocolate to warm the egg and then returned it to the makeshift double boiler. This was a mistake: It didn't curdle so much as it mysteriously separated, and after some cursing I scrapped it and started again. This time, I added all the mixture to the egg and used a thermometer to check it was at a safe temperature to proceed. It did make a nice custardy chocolate mix (which also tasted excellent).


Said custardy chocolate mix was then combined with the graham crackers crumbs, finely chopped almonds and coconut. This smelled great, kind of like Girl Scout Samoas.

It also turned into a nice, thick dough, which pressed so easily into an 8 x 8 baking dish. So easily, in fact, that there wasn't any left over to sample.

On to the second layer. I was at first baffled: I had it in my head that this was a custard-like layer, probably because one of the ingredients is 2 Tbsp. of vanilla custard powder (or pudding mix, in the States). But I wasn't thinking straight. Because what do you get from a stick of butter, roughly 3 Tbsp. cream, pudding mix and 2 c. icing (confectioner's) sugar? Holy buttercream, Batman!

I'm not crazy about frostings with lots of confectioner's sugar, so I had some doubts as I spread the buttercream across the base. Keith and Alex, however, were busy licking the frosting off the beaters and assuring me that it was very good.

The last step was to melt 4 oz. of semisweet chocolate with 2 Tbsp. of butter and pour that on top of the buttercream layer, then throw the whole thing in the fridge to chill. Some recipes said for an hour, others said for several. I went with several.

THE VERDICT: An excellent, tasty combination of flavors. I couldn't taste the confectioner's sugar at all. The bottom layer may have smelled like Samoas, but it tasted even better. Four thumbs up. And, when the kids weren't looking this morning, I snuck another one for breakfast. A gold medal winner, indeed.