Irish Potatoes

I'm no chef and clearly no food photographer, either.  I probably need to get better with these photos when I post a recipe, but I literally pulled these potatoes out of the oven and walked to the car to go to home group, so this was the best I could do with my iPhone with these babies sitting in my lap.

Our home group decided to do a potluck last week and I got handed the responsibility of making a side dish.  It doesn't sound so bad, right?  But, I usually make my sides out of cans or a box that says "instant," and I wanted to do better than that for our friends.  And to top it off, the person bringing the main dish was making brisket.  Well, way to up the ante there.

So, in a panic on Thursday morning, I started going through Pinterest recipes.  Maybe a homemade mac and cheese?  Who am I kidding?  Mashed potatoes?  Boring.  But, maybe my mom's Irish potatoes?  Bingo.  So thus started a chain of texts, phone calls and voicemails with my mom with questions like, "are they hard to make?" "how long do you boil potatoes?" "how much should I use for this many people?"  Honestly, this happens a lot.  I think of something my mom makes that I want to try my hand at and she is always gracious to answer my calls, texts, and questions usually while she is at work.  Then in the evening she'll send me a text asking me how it turned out.

Now these potatoes are no paleo, low calorie, cardboard potatoes.  These are so fattening you wouldn't believe it.  I mean sour cream, cream cheese, and butter.  The trifecta.  Here we go...

What you need:
-bag of potatoes (should be ten in there)
-1- 8 ounce pack of cream cheese
-1 stick of butter
-1- 16 ounce container of sour cream
-paprika
-a little bit of milk

What to do:
1. Wash, peel and cube potatoes.  Boil them for 20 minutes.
2. Immediately drain them.  Use a hand mixer to mix them up making sure there are no lumps.  Add a little milk (as much or as little as you want, just eyeball it) to get it a little creamier and smooth.
3. Add in the stick of butter, block of cream cheese and container of sour cream (I didn't add all of the sour cream.  Add some, mix and taste it and just add until you are satisfied) while the potatoes are still hot to help melt it all.  Use the mixer to mix it all in until smooth.
4. Pour into a baking dish and top with a little paprika.
5.  Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.
6. Eat it and don't feel guilty.

*This was made for a group of 8 adults and several kids and we still had some left over. Just adjust the amount of everything to how many you need to serve!