By: Denise Foley

Despite the name, Irish potatoes aren’t Irish and they aren’t potatoes. They’re a candy made from cream cheese, butter, confectioners’ sugar, coconut, vanilla, a little milk or cream, rolled into potato shapes and covered in cinnamon. If you rolled them into egg shape, you’d have Easter candy. The taste is similar if not downright the same.

Some people think they were made to commemorate the Irish potato famine. The truth is, no one really knows. I’d like to think that a bunch of confectioners (maybe even my great-grandfather, who had a confectioners’ shop on Haines Street in Germantown in 1890) were goofing off one day, tossing some buttercream around, when someone accidently dropped it in a vat of cinnamon and uttered some Irish variant of “Eureka!” and noted, “This looks like a patayta!” (That’s the Irish Germantown way of saying spud.)

Asher’s Chocolates and Oh Ryan’s, both Philly companies, make most of the Irish potatoes available commercially in the city.

For those of you watching your waistline, one potato is about 60 calories. Betcha can’t eat just one.

If you’d like to make your own, check out our darling friend, Agnes McCafferty’s recipe here.