Sugar Savvy

St. Patrick’s Day Potato

How will you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day? Corned beef and cabbage? Irish soda bread? Beer or Irish whiskey? Green bagels? Not for me, thanks. I am going to eat a potato. Not just any potato, but one made by See’s Candies.

This sweet spud comes complete with cinnamon-cocoa peel and pine nut eyes and a white chocolate divinity center. The St. Patrick’s Day Potato is available now in stores and at the See’s Candies’ website for mail order. (For more information on this series, please read the author’s note here.)

Now, I have always questioned the potato as a celebratory symbol of Ireland since it was the potato famines of the 1800s that resulted in so much migration, starvation and death. Shamrocks, gold coins and leprechauns are perhaps lighter links to the folklore of the Emerald Isle. If you prefer, See’s has molded milk chocolate candies in those shapes wrapped in green or gold foil. But it is the potato that See’s has chosen to elevate to pot-of-gold status.

Tasting Report

Description:
The potato is a 2.5 ounce mass of white chocolate divinity and California walnuts hand-shaped to resemble a small russet potato. The potato is then covered with a thin layer of milk chocolate and rolled in the cinnamon and cocoa power mixture. The pine nuts are placed by hand to resemble the potato’s eyes. The candy spud is nestled into a frilly green cup and packaged in a cheery light green box covered in shamrocks and slightly politically incorrect, dancing, red-haired, green-clad men, possibly leprechauns.

Taste:
Divinity is a fluffy white candy usually made with egg whites and nuts. This divinity is divine. The filling is light and not too sweet and reminded me a little bit of the See’s vanilla fudge tasted a few weeks ago. Like the fudge, the potato is stuffed with fresh, crisp walnuts. You hardly notice the milk chocolate coating when you bite into the candy because of the intriguing taste of the cocoa-cinnamon mixture. (Forget cinnamon sugar, I’m going to use this combo on my French toast from now on.) After my first bite I reached for the box to see what gave the candy its almost liqueur-like taste. I think it was the strong cinnamon flavor mixing with the vanilla notes of the filling. While very tasty, the cocoa-cinnamon topping was very messy, dusting everything it came in contact with with a spray of fine brown powder. This is not a candy you can sneak a bite of and think you won’t get caught. Actually nothing about this candy is particularly subtle.

See’s Trivia:
See’s Candies was bought in 1972 by Berkshire Hathaway, headed by famed investor Warren Buffett.

Ingredients:
Lots of information on this candy is available because the spuds are individually packaged. Each potato serves two. (Well, not here at The Chocolate Box, but maybe at your house.) Each serving contains 180 calories and since we are talking potatoes here, I thought I would mention carbs. Each serving also has 16 grams of carbs, or about five percent of your daily total. Unlike a real potato, however, it offers no fiber and a lot more fat (13 grams) per serving.

As listed on the box, each potato contains walnuts, sugar, corn syrup, cocoa butter, milk, butter, egg whites, cocoa powder, cinnamon, chocolate, pignolia (pine) nuts, vanilla, salt, soy lecithin, and vanillin.

Well Fed Network Ratings:
This was a nice candy, good even, but I wasn’t wowed. I’d pick it for The Chocolate Box but I would only rate it about a 7 compared to other See’s Candies. It is a nice novelty number. Pros: This spud was no dud. Good taste, fun shape. Cons: The cinnamon-cocoa powder “peel” overpowered other elements of the candy and was very messy.