Duchess Potatoes Recipe
An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott
Recipe Overview
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes + 15 minutes
Makes: 12 Duchess Potato puffs
Ingredients Needed
- 500g/1.1lbs potatoes, peeled weight
- 2 tablespoons fine salt
- 30ml/1floz cream
- 30g/1oz butter, melted
- 1 egg yolk
- 28g/1oz butter, melted extra to brush on top
Step-By-Step Instructions
Step 1 BOIL - Cut potatoes into even sized pieces and place in a pot of water. Add 2 tablespoons of salt and bring to a boil. Boil until tender and soft. Drain the water and then place the pot back on the stove to steam dry the potatoes to get rid of any excess water. Don't worry about washing off the salt.
Step 2 MASH - Pass the potato pieces through a potato ricer into a large bowl. Mix well with the cream, melted butter and egg yolk. Taste for seasoning adding salt if needed.
Step 3 PIPE - Line a baking tray with parchment. Place potato mixture in a piping bag fitted with a 845 XL closed star piping tip. See tip above if you're doubling or tripling the recipe. Pipe rosettes (or in my case mini Christmas trees) on the tray. At this stage, you can slide this tray uncovered into the fridge overnight or for up to 2 nights. Or you can bake them straight away.
Step 4 BAKE - Preheat oven to 220C/428F conventional or 200C/392F fan forced. Lightly brush each rosette with extra melted butter and bake for 15 minutes or until you get caramelised edges.
Personal Note
Video How To Make Christmas Crackers
I love having Friendsmas because it allows me to see my friends for a Christmas dinner but also make all of these Christmas recipes. This year Laura and LimaLimaDelta (her boyfriend) came along to Friendsmas along with Queen Viv. Laura asked me what she could bring. I thought about it. Queen Viv always brings champagne and flowers so I asked if she could bring bread rolls and oysters. I would make some ginger and lime oyster dressing and some seaweed butter to go with the rolls.
Everything was going on schedule up until 2 days before. There was one thing that I realised that was one step too far. A few weeks ago I decided to make Christmas crackers. However this decision, made foolishly in the relative quiet of November managed to send me over the edge 2 days before Friendsmas. Cooking is all very easy and fun but craft? Who did I think I was? Was I deluded? Clearly!
I lay in bed one night exhausted and worried about what I would put in the Christmas crackers. Then Mr NQN and I went on a late night supermarket visit and grabbed some bouchon chocolates. They were the perfect shape.
So I'm going to share with you this little craft project to making your own Christmas crackers here. All you need are:
Napkins - just a regular square napkin around 40x40cms or 16x16inches
Ribbon - 2x 40cm/16inch pieces of ribbon per Christmas Cracker
Wrapping Paper - 12x18cms/4.7x7inch rectangle.
A treat to put inside.
Sticky tape
Step 1 - Wrap up the treat in the wrapping paper and create a tube out of the wrapping paper. Secure with sticky tape.
Step 2 - Place the tube in the centre bottom of a napkin. Roll up. Secure each end with a ribbon bow! And that's it!
They were actually quite easy and took about 2 minutes for each one although if you were doing it for a massive crowd I'd recommend against making your own. Or if you're exhausted before Christmas forget these. The way I described them to Laura was a "Sharp descent into madness"!
So tell me Dear Reader, are you good at crafts? Have you ever made your own Christmas crackers?