Tuesday, May 12, 2015

How NOT to clean your piping tips...


Duchess Potatoes are one of those fancy dishes that you just don't make at home.  Why?  When you can just as easy make a boxes mashed potato mix or even boil and mash your own spuds?  Well for Easter I wanted the potatoes to be special - Duchess Potatoes.  I thought finding a recipe would be easy.  Oh sure there are plenty of recipes out there, but they were all boring and had no pizzazz to them.  I wanted something with garlic and taste to them.
I noticed that one of the big differences with Duchess Potatoes and make ahead potatoes were egg yolks.  Well that's easy.  I made a modified make ahead mashed potato recipe and added a few egg yolks.  Perfect!  I used one of my big piping tips to pipe them out onto a pan - oh so pretty!  Into the fridge they went with some plastic wrap on top so they wouldn't dry out, then off to clean my dishes.  I'm not sure how you clean your piping tips, I usually try to get as much out of them as possible, using my finger, just slip your finger in and most of the extra comes out.  Well, all of the extra came out, including my finger.  Please note the extra sharp points of this tip.  Yeah, digging into my finger.  I tried to pull it out, not dice.  So I thought about it for a bit.  Tried not to panic, thought of how silly it would be to head to the ER or immediate care with this dumb metal tip on my finger.  I could see myself on some website talking about dumb things people go to the hospital for.
I tried a few things and finally decided to take a needle nose pliers, pull the tip back as far as I could on my finger and bend each tip back.  Sacrificing the tip to save my finger seemed worthwhile.  It wasn't really the kind of bling I like to wear anyway.
Anyway, these potatoes are awesome.  Try them.  Don't stick your finger into the tip!  That's stupid!  Trust me - I know stupid.

Duchess Potatoes
6-8 potatoes
1/2 pkg cream cheese (4 ounces)
1 cup French onion dip-sour cream style
3 egg yolks
garlic salt to taste
Egg Wash:
 1 egg 
 1 tablespoon milk
Paprika (optional)

Peel and boil potatoes until tender; drain.  In large mixing bowl, combine softened cream cheese, dip and garlic salt.  Mix until blended and add hot potatoes one by one, beating until light and fluffy.  Temper the egg yolks with some potato mixture as to not cook them, then add them into the potatoes.  Fill a piping bag fitted with a large tip and pipe out round motions creating a mound of potatoes.
These can be baked immediately or covered with plastic wrap in the fridge for a day.

When ready to bake, mix egg wash and brush on potatoes.  Sprinkle a little paprika on for color, and bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes until potato edges are golden brown.

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