Potato Candy - Easy Peanut Butter Pinwheels - Depression Era Recipe - The Hillbilly Kitchen

howdy folks and welcome to the hillbilly kitchen today we're making old-fashioned potato candy now i'm really excited about this recipe this year is the first time i've got to make this in a very long time and it's because when i first got married my husband said that his favorite christmas candy was peanut butter pinwheels so i got the recipe that he liked it's the one with the syrup when you boil the syrup and you you know you mix in the powdered sugar and all that stuff and it takes a long time you're dealing with a hot syrup and it's very very tricky this recipe though we are going to make these beautiful peanut butter pinwheels that come out absolutely perfect and they're all rolled up nice and you literally can't tell the difference and we're making them with a potato powdered sugar and peanut butter and that's literally all you need and this recipe is so much easier than the other one you are going to be amazed if you've made peanut butter pinwheels with the syrup you do have to have a plain russet potato what my granny called an arch tater this won't work with other kinds of potatoes and if you do get it to work it's not going to work quite as good you want a plain old russet potato and a potato this size will make three or four logs of pinwheel logs like this it'll make three or four times as much so you don't need much potato at all and what you're gonna do is you're gonna peel your potato put it in water and boil it just plain water and you want to cook it until it's really really done and that's what i've done here this is just a potato in boiling water but you want it to be soft like that it should fall apart and then you're going to drain it now after you've drained it you want to mash it up really really good and i'm using a wire strainer and i'm just going to take a spoon and mash my potato through the strainer you don't have to do this you can mix it with an electric mixer you can even squeeze it up with your hands if you want to but i have found when i was making this that the wire strainer works much easier and it makes sure that there is absolutely no lumps left in it and you're going to kind of need this so even if there is a lump left in it it's not that picky so it's not gonna make a huge difference in the final product i just think that doing this saves you some time in the end all right i have got plenty here so i'm just gonna scoop this off i've probably got enough here to at least do two of these potato logs already or candy logs all right now our potatoes get mashed up um i have seen people measure this several different ways um i do for a single log and you can multiply the recipe and do as much as you want to but i do about four tablespoons once i've mashed it a potato and i'm going to save this because here's another trick to this with this recipe it is so forgiving once we start mixing this together if it starts to get too dry we can add in a little more potato and i've seen recipes where people make this and they add a little milk into it like a tablespoon of milk i've never done that and i think that's probably just to adjust the consistency and if mine gets a little dry i just add in a little more potato now i will tell you this i said you can make it with the powdered sugar just a regular old russet potato and peanut butter it is much it has a much better flavor if you have vanilla and you add just a half a teaspoon of vanilla and if you add just a tiny pinch of salt and i'm not talking much salt at all you just want a pinch so i'm going to go ahead and do a half a teaspoon of vanilla and it also tastes much more um like the syrup candy if you put a little vanilla in it but this was a depression error recipe and during the depression and the way times are now just this little pinch of salt not everybody has the money to afford vanilla right now and during the depression not everybody had the money to afford vanilla so if you don't have it you can make it without it and it's still a very good candy okay now this is almost like magic and this is another good one that you can make with the kids because you're not dealing with that hot syrup you know having a stain at the stove and stir it and you can even let your potato cool down before you start working with it so there's nothing to get burned but we're just going to add in about a cup of our powdered sugar and i've got about three and a half cups here i might not use all of this but you want to have about three three and a half cups per um log you're making and you just start stirring it now i was making this over here yesterday and alex was watching me and she's watched me make the syrup candy for years and david made the syrup candy at yesteryear and he because he was learning how to cook it failed about as often as it succeeded and look at what this is doing it's literally a liquefied it's a reaction between the the sugar the powdered sugar and the starch and the potato and what you have right now is what you have when you get done with that syrup only you're not having a rush you're not having a hurry there was no heating it to the exact temperature standing there with candy thermometers it really doesn't matter if it's raining or not or you know how humid it is in the house you don't have to deal with any of that when you're doing the potato candy and i tried to research this recipe to see where it came from and it came from this area there's nobody who is actually giving credit with it um it was probably the irish immigrants who settled in the southern appalachian mountains but it dates back as best anybody can tell to the depression so some little hillbilly woman in her kitchen figured out that you could do this i mean that's absolutely incredible and alex was watching this and she saw how much liquid that made there's no liquid in there there's just that little bit of mashed potato in the powdered sugar and she goes oh that's some kind of magic it almost is some kind of magic and it's so much easier you just you won't even believe it and now i'm going to add most of my sugar not all of it most of it and i'm gonna stir it in and like i said if you add too much sugar you can add in a little more potato and work it in and it will moisten it back up so it's not like the syrup stuff if you add in too much sugar you've either got to throw it away or you've got to live with the crumbles what you want to do with the sugar is you want to work this until it gets about the consistency of play-doh and i am going to use my hands to mix it some and like i said you can mix this with an electric mixer especially with a stand mixer with a paddle on it i kind of like working it with my hands usually when i make if i'm making bread or rolls or something for me and brett i'll need those with my hand instead of needing them with the stand mixer it's kind of a relaxing part of cooking okay now i'm definitely gonna need a little more powdered sugar because you can see there it's still way too runny to work with it and it's a long way from play-doh if you have trouble with the syrup candies this is gonna be a christmas miracle for you uh of course i guess everybody has trouble with the syrup candies i mean there's just so many factors that affect it and this really it's so easy and you can work with it you can change it if it gets too dry you add more potato if it's too wet you add more powdered sugar about the only way you could mess it up is use the wrong kind of potato or the wrong kind of sugar and this is just regular old powdered sugar in the bag you don't want to use granulated sugar and you don't want to use brown sugar uh sometimes this is called icing sugar or confectioners sugar but that's what you want and it has corn starch in it that's what gives it that white color okay we're getting closer but we're still not to that dough stage yet that we want and you just add it a little bit at a time until you start to get that dough and then you're going to knead it a little bit i want to thank all y'all who asked for this recipe because like i said i've been doing the syrup stuff pretty much ever since i've been married my husband said it was his favorite christmas candy so i got the recipe and that's what i made and i haven't had this since i was a little girl and it's one of those recipes that not many people wrote down because it was so simple um women would just make it year after year and not write it down okay i'm starting to get a dough now but this still isn't stiff enough to roll up and actually form into the the candy rolls because you have to be able to spread your peanut butter on it and then roll it up okay now it's starting to form a ball and that's what i want at this point working on a piece of parchment paper or a piece of wax paper will save you a whole lot of cleanup time um again it's something that you don't have to have but it does make the job a little bit easier because who wants to clean powdered sugar off your countertop okay i've got a pretty good um dough ball going here so i'm gonna put it out on my parchment paper but i'm going to put a pretty heavy layer of powdered sugar out before i put it out because like i said i want to knead it just a little bit with my hands i've stirred it quite a bit with this and you can do it you know in your stand mixer or with a hand mixer if you want to i just kind of like to work with it it's one of those things you know it takes a minute but it's kind of relaxing put a little more powdered sugar on top of it because it is still pretty sticky right now keep sprinkling a little bit of powdered sugar along as you need it it's still really sticky it is getting less sticky and i want to keep working it and playing with it here until it will come off of my hands that way i'll know that it's stiff enough that when i roll it up it's going to hold its shape i know we've all had peanut butter pinwheels and those of you who make potato candy you've probably had potato candy or you've probably eaten it that somebody else has made and it just smooshes down and it's real thin and it doesn't hold that round shape well that's because it wasn't worked quite enough and maybe it didn't have quite enough powdered sugar in it okay now i have something that is pretty much the consistency of play-doh and it's starting to pull off my hands and it's smooth so what i want to do is i want to put a little bit more powdered sugar on my paper because i want to make sure i have enough down so it doesn't stick it's your it's always going to be sticky when you're making this but it should um be like play-doh and when you work it um if you have any potato lumps in it that will get the potato lumps out but if you use that strainer method where you mash the potato through the strainer you're not going to have any lumps at all so put this down on your paper and kind of get it in a rectangle shape which i didn't do before i put it down there because you want to roll this out in a rectangle now how big you roll it is really up to you it's just depends on how fat you want your potato log to be or your candy log to be put a little powdered sugar on your rolling pin and then just roll very carefully until you get it about a quarter of an inch thick now i've seen a lot of folks roll this out and then they'll cut the edge off and make the edges perfectly smooth before they roll it up i don't do that um i kind of do try to square up the edges just a little bit straighten them up after i've rolled it out but i just use my finger and do that and then kind of mash it back into as much of a rectangle as i can get you can roll it out a little thinner if you want to but the thinner you get it the more likely it's going to be to crack so about a quarter of an inch is as thin as you want to go and how much peanut butter you use is kind of up to you i use anywhere between a quarter and a third of a cup per um candy log or candy roll uh you can use more you can use less i said it's just up to you and that's one of the things that's so great about this recipe you don't even have to measure anything you adjust the potato and the powdered sugar until you get it the right consistency you just need kind of basic measurements to get started with so you know how much you're gonna need and you want about uh four tablespoons of your mashed potato and i like i said i don't pack it and i use three and a half i think this time it took me like almost four cups of powdered sugar to get it the right consistency but how much moisture is in your potato is going to affect that so you know you want to adjust it between three to four cups something like that just get it to that play-doh consistency and it really is almost impossible to have this fail because you can keep playing with it until you get it right you're not on that limit that time limit that you are when you're working with that hot syrup said i like to be pretty generous with the peanut butter and how big you roll this out again is something it's a your call the wider it is the farther from the where you're rolling it up to the from the front to the back is going to give you more layers if you make it skinnier you're only you're going to have a really skinny candy log and it's going to be like a single roll of peanut butter and candy so you know if you want a really thick peanut butter roll roll this out much longer and roll it over more times it's just kind of all what look you want what taste you want um and the texture you can play with it until you get it just right and something else that's cool about these that you don't get when you do the syrup like my refrigerator is packed because we've gone into full holiday baking mode around here charlotte was over and we made some cookies we made gingerbread and chocolate chip and then alex came over and we made fudge and more chocolate chip and uh christmas cookies you know the frosted christmas cookies and thumbprint cookies and stuff so i've got it pretty much loaded and when i put this one we made this yesterday when i put it in the refrigerator it got a little bit smushed even after this has been in the refrigerator you can shape it just a little bit now you can't do a ton with it but you can shape it just a little bit and round it back up a little bit you can't do that with the stuff that you make with a syrup anyways once you got your peanut butter on you can leave a little bit you know like not go right up to the edge that you're rolling it to but again that's up to you because all it's going to do is it's going to give you like a peanut butter stripe down the outside if you get it on the edge and that doesn't bother me you just want to very carefully start rolling this up off your paper and like i said the paper really helps with this it makes it much easier than if you do it on the counter top and if you've got one of those little dough blades you can use that to kind of help release it from the paper if you're having problems sometimes i use it and sometimes i don't it does help if you lift up the edge of your paper and you just real slow work your way from one side to the other and roll it up okay and once you get it all rolled see the edge of my peanut butter is peeking out under there i can feel it you want to roll it up and put it in the refrigerator for two three hours maybe even a little bit longer until it is good and firm and then you slice it and serve it and that's all there is to it and you can wrap it up in this paper that you use to roll it out on you can wrap it up in plastic wrap just whatever but just wrap it up in something kind of airtight and if you wrap it up in this you can roll it back and it kind of helps it hold its shape and in two or three hours you'll have a nice firm peanut butter log just like this that you can slice and you can serve and nobody's going to know that you didn't stand over the stove and cook for hours cooking that syrup nobody's going to know you didn't struggle to get it just the right temperature you didn't fight the humidity and all that stuff because it literally tastes the same i told y'all this was brett's favorite candy when we met and i got the recipe well the stuff with the syrup he said that was his favorite candy recipe i got the recipe i've made that stuff for at least 33 years out of the 35 years we've been married and i made this this year thanks to all who asked for the recipe and he loves it he said it's as good as the stuff where you fight the syrup so give this one a try it's really really easy it's fun and easy to make with the kids they'll like playing in it with their hands um and you don't have to worry about them getting burned it's another really good one and it's also another one that really there's no way to mess it up because if you're if you don't have that consistency you can take your time and work with it until you get it and until you get it perfect and you know once it's in the fridge it's firm it's set up you can slice it you can serve it it'll keep in the fridge for a week or two uh and you can sit it out on the table you know and serve it for several days i've you can even ship this um you know slice it up and wrap it up just make sure it's wrapped up airtight when you ship it because it will tend to dry out there's no milk in this to spoil or anything like this so this is actually a better one to leave sitting out then a lot of the candies that have milk and stuff in them there's no chocolate to melt so if you wanted to slice this and leave it sitting out on your table and just cover it with something so people could get it as they come by it's great for that i'm going to clean off my hands and i got to say thank you to summer i want to say thank you to some folks i've got some really cool gifts and a ton of cards look at all these cards um i checked the mailbox on friday i think the post office box a lot of you've asked about an address and you said the only address says business inquiries the business consists of me and brett that's it um some folks think that we're part of um a corporation or were affiliated with somebody else or something the hillbilly kitchen is me and brent edits my videos um some of you have been talking to my daughter melinda my youngest daughter on parlor and facebook and we're both trying to figure out be with you but uh she's been talking to some of y'all on parlor i know and on facebook but the business address is the address there's you know nothing it's just us there's no staff no warehouse no company but anyway uh i'm trying to return all of your cards and all of these have been returned and the ones that i showed you in the previous video but a couple of them didn't have any return address this beautiful card here is from rob and liz in kentucky there's no return address but thank you for the card and this one was from portland from susie no return address thank you susie and a lot of you wrote really nice notes in your cards i love those thank you so much this is from vicki there's a note this one here is from randy and kelly and it actually has their family photo in it and they live pretty close so maybe we'll get to meet sometime thank you so much guys this is lovely and i enjoyed your note uh this is from jody [Music] sherry thank you [Music] joe theresa [Music] nancy that's a beautiful one thank you [Music] donny and thank you donnie um i can read it this is from kathy if y'all remember faz she won the pizza oven that we gave away she told me i don't know if i should tell this or not but she said that was a pet name that her husband gave her when they first met and i believe she told me they had been married longer than bret and i and he still calls her that so that's so cute marie marie wrote a very nice note thank you roxanne in california we really got cards from all over the country uh mary beth [Music] oh this one is real cute i'm gonna have to up my card game next year shop harder for cards this is from vicki in that cute it's got like a little charm in it and vicki wrote a note [Music] so this one was from savannah and there's a nice note in there becky craig and gina they're from new york and i got a nice note from beverly and what i do with all these i'm going to put a picture in the video is i tape them all around my front door and i want you all to know that i will keep these cards for the rest of my life one of the things my children have to look forward to when i pass away they're going to have to go through stacks and stacks and stacks of christmas cards i literally have every christmas card i have ever received in a box so thank you all and they will be displayed on my door until after christmas um i also want to thank abby abby sent me this i didn't even know these things existed it's called a spill stopper and you put it on top of your pot and it keeps your pot from boiling over and you can use it as a colander to drain whatever you're cooking when you get done like if you're cooking potatoes or pasta or something that is so neat i had no idea that even existed and dear vanessa has been shopping again thank you so much vanessa she got me some real large she found it on amazon and she got me this candle warmer over here that i'm using today with some um orange cinnamon roll wax and it smells so good uh and it's just adorable with the little rooster on it but she got me this and i opened this and brett and i both died laughing every meal you make everybody you take i'll be watching you is that not just too funny and having those we all need something to laugh at these days uh before we go um i i want to leave y'all with a little something because this will be our last video until after christmas i'll see y'all again right after christmas and i'm gonna go check the mailbox again tomorrow all these christmas cards you're gonna get one back from me but if i haven't gotten your card yet you'll get it after christmas i'm sorry but luke 2 14 says glory to god in the highest and on earth peace good will toward men more than ever this christmas pray for our nation pray for our leaders and pray for each other and my prayer for you is that god will quiet you with his peace convert you with his presence and bless you with his love merry christmas to all of you thank you so much for being a part of the hillbilly kitchen this year and if you haven't already please don't forget to click like and subscribe before you leave and until next time remember to put god [Music] first [Music] you

Channel: The Hillbilly Kitchen - Down Home Country Cooking

Views: 266,057

Rating: 4.9389644 out of 5

Keywords: The Hillbilly Kitchen, Country Cooking, Verses And Vittles, Southern Cooking, Candy Recipe, Video Cooking Tutorial, Cooking, Foodie, How To Make Potato Candy, Comfort Food, Struggle Food, Kid Friendly Recipe, Potato Candy Recipe, Budget Recipe, Easy Recipe, Recipe, Simple Recipe, Quarantine Cooking, Depression Recipe, No-Fail Peanut Butter Pinwheels, Homemade Candy, Christmas Candy, Gifts From The Kitchen, Peanut Butter Candy, 3 Ingredient Peanut Butter Pinwheels, tasty

Id: IESdzzKkP94

Length: 30min 35sec (1835 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 21 2020