I made these chewy-sweet, cinnamon robed candies the day before St. Patrick's Day but since I foolishly scheduled a painful spinal procedure on the big day, candy didn't seem to be the remedy for the pain that followed and I instead turned to the most obvious elixir, a few pints of Guinness. My poor Irish potato candies sat neglected in the kitchen for the next week and I nearly forgot all about them until I caught a friend visiting for over the Easter holiday popping them one after another into his mouth, while I slaved over the bisteeya I promised to make him. "These are delicious," he said as he tossed another back, "Easter egg candy makes so much more sense than a basket of hard boiled eggs no one ever eats."

"Thanks," I replied, not letting on that they were supposed to resemble potatoes, not eggs, "I just thought I'd try something different this year."  My poor, rejected, but apparently extremely versatile, candy were transformed from lowly potatoes to sweet golden eggs and my contended friend, who was buzzing with an intense sugar high by the time we sat down to dinner, was none the wiser.

Considering that I boiled a half dozen eggs for my bisteeya, it was Easter Sunday, and my friend over-indulged in an entire bowl of candy he believed were intended to be eggs, I thought more than I ever wanted to about eggs last weekend and wondered why they are so inextricably bound to the Easter holiday. The obvious answer, and in this case the correct one, is because the egg is a symbol of renewal and new life, a theme celebrated by both Christians on Easter Sunday and in the ancient pagan rituals from which Easter was inspired (perhaps I'm giving away too much information but this is my belief and I'm sticking to it).

The word Easter is derived from the Nordic words that symbolize rebirth and growth Eostur, Ostara and Eastar and the pagan Germanic goddess Eostre, a symbol of the sun and awakening. The egg as a symbol of life has been celebrated for millennia by many different ancient cultures including the Egyptians, Persians, Hindus and Phoenicians, all of whom weave into their creation stories the origins of the world springing forth from an egg.

The tradition of coloring eggs at Easter is shared by many cultures around the world but its origins are difficult to trace. The first book to mention colored eggs is over five centuries old and there is a record in the household accounts of the English king Edward I for an expenditure of 18 pence to cover the cost of 450 gold leafed eggs intended as Easter gifts for members of the court. In medieval times, colored Easter eggs were also gifted to peasants.

I did not dye Easter eggs this year since I found myself in a household of adults and for me, it's just not as much fun to do it without kids around. The year before I spent it with my young cousins in the Midwest who I talked into dying eggs naturally instead of dropping the technicolor Paas pellets into mugs as is the tradition of many a superstore shopping household. Initially they shot me a stew of quizzical and disgusted looks as we collected the ingredients needed to dye au natural, as if to say that spinach, blueberries, beets, turmeric and coffee had no business in our egg dying ritual. Once our pots were boiling however, and our eggs emerged as beautifully colored as their Paas counterparts, it no longer mattered to them that the house smelled as if a salad bar had been dropped into the middle of a Starbucks.

The process for naturally dyed Easter eggs is a simple one and aesthetically, the results are just as lovely and spring-like as their artificially colored counterparts. For yellow eggs, use a combination of turmeric, cumin, boiled orange or lemon peels, celery seed and carrots. For blue eggs combine canned blueberries, red cabbage leaves and purple grape juice. For violet blue use violet flower blossoms and red onion skins. For green eggs combine liquid chlorophyll with boiled spinach leaves. Espresso power and black walnut shells will produce brown eggs and for pink eggs combine red beets, cranberry juice and raspberries. For red eggs use a large amount of red onion skins and red cabbage leaves.  

The general procedure for naturally colored Easter eggs is to place hard boiled eggs in a single layer in a sauce pan. Add enough water to cover the eggs along with a teaspoon of white vinegar. Add the ingredients for the dye, using more material to produce more intense colors, and bring to a boil. Then reduce heat and simmer gently for fifteen minutes. If the desired color intensity is achieved, remove the eggs form the liquid, pat dry and store. For more intense color, strain the liquid through a coffee filter or fine mesh chinois, return the eggs to the liquid and store refrigerated in a covered container overnight.

Thinking way too much about Easter eggs last Sunday, I also wondered where the strange tradition of Easter egg rolling contests came from. The answer is an obvious one to those steeped in Christian traditions. The rolling egg is meant to symbolize the rolling of the stone away from Christ's tomb. I wonder how many kids are thinking about that as they use their noses to scoot their egg to the finish line.

One thing I was always confused by as a child was the Easter bunny/Easter egg connection. Did Easter bunnies have the ability to lay Easter eggs? Did they possess magical egg laying abilities that the normal garden variety bunny did not? Were they somehow related to chickens? Were they hiding a pair of wings beneath all that fuzzy pink bunny fur? Did they not lay eggs at all but instead raided chicken coops around the world every Easter to deliver the goods to my basket? The answer it seems is yet again an obvious one. Just as eggs are a symbol of fertility and life, so too are bunnies, a universal symbol of mass reproduction the world over.

The Easter egg hunt is also tied to the bunny/egg connection. The egg hunt is one of the oldest games in history and its origins stem from the apparently clumsy Easter bunny dropping eggs in the grass on his way to delivering them to our baskets. The Easter eggs were believed to hide themselves and children were sent out to recover them before they began to rot and fill the air with the stench that only a putrid hard boiled egg can deliver (and Yellowstone's Old Faithful).  

I suppose the only Easter egg related question left then is the most obvious one. What is the secret to a perfect hard boiled egg? For years, my attempts resulted in a rubbery egg white surrounding a crumbly yolk coated in an unsavory green ring, the result of sulfur in the egg white and iron in the yolk that forms when eggs are heated too long and then cooled too quickly. It was not until culinary school that I finally learned the steps required to produce a perfectly boiled egg. While I have read many different recipes claiming to result in exquisite results, I now stick to this method as it produces the desired outcome each and every time.

For a perfectly boiled egg, place eggs in a single layer in a sauce pot and cover with cold water by two inches. Bring the water to a rolling boil and then remove the pot from the heat. Cover the pot with a securely fitting lid and let it sit for exactly twelve minutes. Remove the eggs from the warm water, transfer to an ice bath and let them cool completely before storing refrigerated or enjoying. To peel a hard boiled egg and avoid the gouges in the white that sometimes result, gently crack the egg in several places on a flat surface and then peel under a stream of cold running water. Voila! A sumptuous hard boiled egg.

Egg rolling, egg hiding, egg coloring. We do so many strange things to the egg at Easter time but if you're like me, the actual hard boiled egg itself is rarely consumed unless it finds its way into an egg salad sandwich later on in the week. Hopefully next year, a basket of naturally colored, perfectly boiled hard boiled eggs will be so tempting they will be consumed in all their naked, unadulterated, hard boiled glory.

The recipe for my Irish Easter Potato Egg Candy (it's actually just called Irish Potato Candy but the other moniker seems so appropriate that I had to insert in somewhere) could not be easier. With a simple list of ingredients and ten minutes, you too will have a candy in your bowl that strangely enough, straddles the divide between St. Patrick's Day and Easter Sunday.

Irish Potato Candy 

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, softened
4 ounces whole fat cream cheese, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
16 ounces (one box) confectioners' sugar
2 1/2 cups sweetened coconut
Ground cinnamon, enough to completely coat the candy

1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and cream cheese. Beat in the vanilla and then at low speed, the confectioners' sugar. Add the coconut and beat to thoroughly incorporate. Roll pinches of the mixture between hands to form ovals (resembling potatoes or, alternatively, Easter eggs). Roll balls in cinnamon to thoroughly coat and refrigerate until firm. Store refrigerated in an air tight container. The candy will keep for up to two weeks.

Yield: 30-36 pieces