This week I planted the first spuds for the new season. I usually grow a round of Jersey Bennes first. As long as I keep any frost off them, we should be digging up fresh baby potatoes for dinner in late September.
But in the meantime, we still have a couple of buckets of last season’s main potato harvest to get through. We grew our usual Agria potatoes last year, but we were also gifted some Desiree potatoes which absolutely blew us away.
While we were getting potatoes the size of shoes from our Agrias (seriously, 500-750g potatoes!); the Desiree produced an incredible volume of spuds. Richard was just pulling up potato, after potato, after potato.
In terms of use, they’re much the same as Agria, just with red skins. We’re converts! We love them, but we have so many of them. I’ve needed to find new ways to use potatoes.
One of my new favourite ways to use potatoes is my Gran Shirley’s Sally Lunn. Yes – a Sally Lunn is supposed to have potato in it. It’s amazing! Give it a try.
Ingredients
Loaf
¾ cup white sugar
1 cup mashed potato (cold)
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
½ cup sultanas or fruit
¼ cup milk (approx)
Icing
50 grams butter (softened)
1 cup icing sugar
1 tbsp cold water
1 tsp essence (vanilla, raspberry) – optional
coconut
Instructions
- Cream sugar and potato. It will transform into a batter-like texture.
- Stir in flour, baking powder, salt, and fruit.
- Cut in milk with a bread knife until you reach a stiff dough.
- Shape into two small loaves and place on a greased oven tray. Brush loaves with leftover milk, or water.
- Bake for 30 minutes at 180ºC.
- Allow to cool completely on a wire rack before cutting or icing.
- Once cool, split horizontally and spread with butter. Return top.
- Ice buns and sprinkle or dip in coconut. Shake off excess. Serve.
To make icing:
- Beat butter into icing sugar.
- Add essences and enough cold water to reach desired texture (use a few drops at a time).
Additional handy tips
Gran specifies this to be made as two small loaves, and honestly – that works better. You could probably store the unbaked dough a couple of days in the fridge if you wanted to. But you can also make it as one large loaf – in which case you want to add an extra 10 minutes to the cooking time.
This isn’t really a recipe for ‘leftovers’ – ideally you want to take your potato out of the mash before you add savoury ingredients like cheese and pepper! You can, however, freeze mashed potato in one-cup lots so you can make a Sally Lunn whenever you feel the need.
I’m told if you mash your potato with a ricer, your Sally Lunn will be even better. But I’m not buying a piece of equipment for this, and a normal masher seems to work just fine.
