St. Patrick's Day Countdown: Potato for Dessert?
Written by Ciaran on Mar 16, 2026 | 0 Comments
Our countdown to St. Patrick’s Day— with daily offers and potato-y goodness —ends tomorrow. Don't miss our 17% off sitewide sale, running through to St. Patrick's Day in honor of our national holiday!
And on the second last day of our countdown, we finally get to my children’s favourite part of any big celebratory meal: dessert! Now, if the idea of potato for dessert sounds strange, you may want to head back to our entry yesterday and see what Potato Pete has to say on the matter.
Photo Credit: National Library of Scotland
It may also interest you to know that some of the earliest known Irish potato recipes were for “sweets” or things my kids would recognize as dessert. Sweet and buttery potato pies or puddings that were mostly the preserve of the well-off.
One such recipe is documented in a 1666 manuscript written by Dorothy Parsons, a 17th-century noblewoman from the Parsons family who resided at Birr Castle in Co. Offaly. Dorothy’s pie was filled with all manner of niceties, including rosewater, currants, raisins, orange peel, cinnamon, white wine, egg yolks and sugar, as well as potato. Curious!
Birr Castle is now home to Dorothy Parson's manuscript and the place is well worth a visit if you find yourself in Co. Offaly. The telescope at Birr Castle—once the largest in the world when built in the 1840s—is also known as The Leviathan of Parsonstown.
Photo Credit: Birr Castle
There is also the very curious-sounding sweet called “Lent Potatoes” presented in the bestselling cookery book of its time, “A New System of Domestic Cookery”(1808) by Mrs Rundell:
Beat three or four ounces of almonds, and three or four bitter, when blanched, putting a little orange-flower water to prevent oiling; add eight ounces of butter, four eggs well beaten and strained, half a glass of raisin wine, and sugar to your taste. Beat all well till quite smooth, and grate in three Savoy biscuits. Make balls of the above with a little flour, the size of a chestnut: throw them into a stew-pan of boiling lard, and boile them of a beautiful yellow brown. Drain them in a sieve. Serve sweet sauce in a boat, to eat with them.
You may have spotted the only problem with this recipe... There actually aren't any potatoes in the "Lent Potatoes"! But there is a traditional sweet recipe in Ireland that does have considerable amounts of potato - Potato apple, or apple praties. This dish was immortalized in a song thought to have been originally published between 1860 and 1880. The word 'praties' is the Irish 'prataí' or potato.
The "Apple Praties" ballad... not sure how these things were supposed to grow!
Photo Credit: National Library of Scotland
The version of these little hand pies that we make are surprisingly delicious. My youngest is a big fan as she curiously doesn’t enjoy pastry made with flour!
Ingredients for four individual (and substantial) pies
- 500 g dry mashed potatoes
- 200 g plain flour
- Pinch of salt
- 4 Bramley apples peeled and chopped into small pieces - if you can’t get bramleys where you are, any cooking apple should be fine.
- ½ cup sugar
Method
- Start by cooking your apple in a saucepan over a low heat with your sugar. You just want to soften them a little but don’t cook it to a mush! You may need to add a splash of water to make sure the apple doesn’t stick or burn. Take off the heat and leave to cool once you are happy with the consistency.
- While that is cooking make your potato dough - basically the potato bread or cake we made on Day 1! Combine mashed potatoes and flour in a mixing bowl and add a small pinch of salt if you fancy it. Not too much though, this is a dessert!
- Take off any jewellery you are wearing on your hands and mix the dough, being careful not to overwork it - otherwise it can get a little rubbery!
- Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and shape into a ball - cutting it into four equal pieces.
- Roll out your four balls into four discs that are no more than 1 cm thick.
- Spoon out your apple mixture onto one side of each round.
- Fold over the side of each round to make a little semicircle, sealing off the edges by crimping them with a fork or your fingers to stop the apple leaking out!
- Carefully transfer your little pies to a hot griddle or dry pan and cook for 5 minutes or so until golden, then carefully flip to do the same to the other side. You know they are ready if they sound a little hollow when tapped.
- Do the same for the other pies and then eat while still warm. You could serve them with some ice cream if you fancied it. But they are just fine on their own!
What's Next?
Check back in with us tomorrow for our final entry - Day 17 of our St. Patrick's Day countdown. Or open Door Number 16 of our 17 Days of celebratory offers!
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Ciaran
My Irish Jeweler
Born in Co. Antrim and reared in Dublin, I was fascinated with Gaelic culture from an early age. I suppose it's not surprising given my mother inherited a grá for the Irish language from my grandfather, an Irish school headmaster. And that grá continues! My brother and sister are now Gaelic teachers here in Ireland, my niece is an award winning Irish dancer, and I proudly work to share Irish culture through our Irish and Celtic Jewelry at My Irish Jeweler!
I love researching and reading about the history of Irish design. It's at the core of what we do here at My Irish Jeweler. I find much of it so interesting that I have to share what I find. I hope you enjoy it!
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