Celebrate St Patrick’s Day by making these delicious potato cakes which take just 10 minutes to make and are  a great way to use up leftover cooked potatoes. They are as popular in this house as pancakes – delicious on their own or as part of a traditional Irish breakfast. This is what I call real fast food and I bet you have all the ingredients in your kitchen right now!  The recipe that comes from a book that my mother had when she was in secondary school back in the 1950s called ‘All in the Cooking’. The pages are faded and falling out and unlike cookery books today there isn’t a single picture in it.

Makes 8 potato cakes Time: 5 mins preparation / 5-10 mins cooking

Ingredients

225g / 8oz cooked potatoes
15g / ½ oz butter (melted)
60g / 2oz plain flour
¼ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
Clarified butter* for cooking

How to make them

• Sieve the flour, salt and baking powder into a bowl
• Sieve the cooked potatoes into the same bowl
• Add the melted butter
• Mix to a smooth dough
• Turn onto a floured surface and knead until smooth
• Roll out the dough with a rolling pin to a thickness of a ½ centimetre
• Cut into triangles (cut the circle of dough in half and then each semi-circle into triangles)
• Heat the clarified butter in a non-stick frying pan
• Add the potato cakes (4 at a time) and fry until golden on one side. turnover and fry gently on the other side.
• Add some more butter and repeat with the other 4 potato cakes.

*Clarified butter doesn’t burn which makes it much easier to cook with. Just melt some butter in the microwave and use the clear liquid (the whey will sink to the bottom and can be discarded)