Irish Potatoes

St, Patrick's Day is an Irish celebration that spans the globe. Today kids will check their Leprachaun traps and everyone will be decked out in green. If you're caught wearing any other color, beware! A pinch is the price you pay for not wearing the Emerald Isle's favorite color. 

The Irish flag today is made up of three stripes: green, white and orange. The Irish are predominately Catholic and before the current flag was created, the country's flag was a harp on a green background. In 1690, King William III's, also known as William of Orange (an area in France, he did not have a perpetual spray-on tan!), largley Protestant army defeated King James II's largely Irish Catholic army. This would mark the start of tensions between the Catholics and the Protestants in Ireland. As a way to acknowledge both groups, the Irish flag changed so that the green would represent the Catholics, the orange would be the Protestants and the white signifies the truce between the two. This leads us to the tradition of wearing green or orange on St. Patty's Day. The Catholics would normally don green and the Protestants orange. I imagine the pinch is a fun way to get back at the orange wearing Protestants.

For our last Irish themed recipe we chose to make Irish Potatoes because they are terribly simple to make and a great little treat. And with a little of that Irish luck, we will have more Irish themed blogs later this year. The goal is to see Eire first hand and bring back some great recipes and stories to share.  If you have any suggestions or requests for what we should see or recipes to bring back we'd be more than happy to hear from you!

 
YOU WILL NEED:

1/4 c. soft butter

4 oz. of regular (not whipped or fat free, better consistency) cream cheese

1 tsp. vanilla extract

2 1/2 c. (about 16 oz) confectioners' sugar

2 1/2 c. flaked coconut

Ground cinnamon

PREPARATIONS:

1. Soften cream cheese and cream together with the butter. 

2. Mix in vanilla. I used a whisk for these two steps because it helped to make it creamy. 

3. Stir in confectioners' sugar one cup at a time. Your mixture will start to get lumpy and difficult to stir. I switched to a spoon halfway through. 

4. Lastly, add in the coconut and mix thoroughly. 

5. Put the ground cinnamon in a separate bowl. Form quarter size balls of the mixture and coat them in cinnamon by rolling them in the bowl. 

Simple and delicious and not prone to the potato blight!