My first experience making this was a total disaster — well, maybe not. We gave away a ton of candy that Christmas, in every conceivable form. Gramma said, “Boil some potatoes and mash ‘em, then add powdered sugar and roll spoonfulls into balls then dip in chocolate.” So, I followed her directions. I wanted some serious candy, so I boiled up about 10 potatoes in a BIG pan. Then I started adding powdered sugar. By the bag(S). There were many bags of powdered sugar. (Yes, I had many bags on hand, I was a cake decorator – way back then – so I always had four or five bags of powdered sugar.)
I moved the candy to the bread bowl (a big honking ceramic thing I couldn’t lift if I tried) and kept mixing. Finally, I separated out a smaller amount and mixed more sugar in it, to get it stiff enough to make small balls. Mom went and got more powdered sugar to finish up the “potato candy” and we ended up using 12 bags of powdered sugar and there were about 20,000 pieces of potato candy rolling around our kitchen. Not all of it became chocolate coated.
I added different flavors, colors and “dippers” and we had every kind of potato candy conceivable to man that winter… And gave away boxes of potato candy to everyone on the planet, including all our neighbors (most of them moved away that winter) and most of the folks at church, some of the people Dad worked with, and anyone who came by to visit got a nice box of potato candy.
At the Christmas Bazaar, I sold (you guessed it) potato candy!
Potato Candy – that doesn’t take over your life…
1 SMALL potato – boiled and skinned – mash it well.
1 teaspoon butter mashed into potato
1/2 teaspoon lemon extract
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest (fine shredded)
about three cups of powdered sugar – 1 cup at a time
make a soft dough (firm enough to work with easily) and form into balls about 1 inch in diameter.
8 ounces REAL chocolate chips
8 ounces edible paraffin
melt together chocolate and paraffin.
dip potato balls into chocolate and let set
These are incredible if you wrap the candy around a maraschino cherry, hazel nut, or other round flavor morsel. Try spiced gum drops for a nice surprise. Or add 1/2 cup coconut to the potato candy and cut the amount of sugar by about 1 cup. Amazingly like Mounds candybars.
We also made some cherry mash using the potato candy as the base. I have no idea what we used to help it become cherry mash – but oh my gosh that was delicious!
Imagination goes a long way with this recipe.
Oh – the one potato variety makes about 3 cups of candy or about 100 candy drops, so you may still want to give some away. And your friends that you give candy to, will be BACK next Christmas for more candy! It’s addictive. YUM!