Irish Potato Cookies...More Like Candies!

These are SO addicting! It is LITERALLY cream cheese butter cream icing only thicker, rolled into potato shapes, and covered in cinnamon. Literally...

I didn't even notice when I was skimming the recipe that it would be icing. I started making it and thought wow...this is what goes on top of my red velvet cupcakes! Then the cinnamon ties it all in.

These are INCREDIBLY easy it's ridiculous. The only time consuming part is letting the "dough" sit in the fridge for about an hour before rolling them into silly potato shapes. Remember I said the taste, texture, and everything about these treats was SO familiar and I couldn't think of where I've had them before??? Well I think it was just that I couldn't put two and two together. It's super thick icing!!

This is the recipe from our dear friend at Bake at 350:

2 cups pecans
4 tbsp. salted butter, room temp
1/4 cup cream cheese, room temp
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. kosher salt
1 lb. powdered sugar
cinnamon
slivered almonds

What I changed: I doubled the recipe because I was bringing them to work and giving some to Dom. I don't remember how many exactly this made, but some of 'em were bigger potatoes then others. I'd say it made about 40, which was accurate because Bridgett said hers made 20.

I ALWAYS use unsalted butter no matter what and this is all I had, so that's what I went with! I left out the pecans because they are super expensive at the store. 1.5 cups of already chopped ones are $5! I would have had to spend $15 on just the pecans. I had sliced almonds at home so I dumped some of these in instead. But not TOO much. Many of the other recipes I compared this one to didn't even have nuts. They actually had coconut which would be delicious.

I also didn't put any of the slivered almonds in as "eyes." The amount of cinnamon wasn't provided so I went with 1 tbsp. and I had a little left over.

What was difficult: The "dough" gets EXTREMELY thick in the mixing bowl. I had to use a whole bag of powdered sugar and when I got down to about 1/6 of the bag, I had to remove the mixing bowl and try to "stir" the rest in. Now...when I say "stir" I mean that the spatula doesn't work and it comes down to the hands! I sort of "kneaded" the mixture and split it into two balls before placing them in the fridge.

I wrapped the balls of "dough" and placed 'em in the fridge for an hour. When you remove them, the "dough" is pretty hard. But then you shape into potatoes, roll 'em in cinnamon, dust the extra cinnamon off with a pastry brush and there ya go! You may be questioning why I keep putting "dough" in quotations. When I think of dough, I think of stuff ya bake. These are no bake mouth parties!!

IRISH POTATO CANDIES!

Beware: These are EXTREMELY sweet. You may become wired :)

Cheers!