Recipes: Loaded Mashed Potato Cakes and Mashed Potato Puffs

Give mashed potatoes a whole new look and flavor by cooking them into simple and tasty Loaded Mashed Potato Cakes or Mashed Potato Puffs. Yes, this post is a doubleheader with two delicious recipes for mashed potatoes. And both recipes are easy ways to transform your leftovers or even fresh mashed potatoes into a brand new dish!

Buttermilk biscuits, green beans, ham, mac and cheese, and mashed potatoes are just some of the delicious comfort foods we enjoy for family dinners here in the South. For fresh potatoes with a homemade taste, I recently discovered Simply Potatoes®. They're made with real ingredients and are quick and easy to prepare--no peeling, shredding, or whipping required!

Simply Potatoes Mashed Potatoes are creamy and delicious as is for those big family dinners. From the microwave to the table, they are ready in minutes! Mashed potatoes certainly haven't always been that easy to prepare. Thank goodness for convenient, new products! And, yes, delicious as they are, they're also tasty in recipes like the Loaded Mashed Potato Cakes and Mashed Potato Puffs I'm sharing with you today.

Looking for something new and different to do with mashed potatoes? Perhaps you're menu planning and you'd like to step away from traditional mashed potatoes. Maybe you just need change! Or maybe you prepared mashed potatoes at your last meal and ended up with a bunch of leftovers that you just aren't sure what to do with. Fresh or leftover, if you have mashed potatoes, I've got you covered with two delicious ways you can prepare them that'll have your guests begging for more!

Loaded Mashed Potato Cakes
It's a Southern tradition to always have more than enough food for your guests. That often means leftovers, but as my mama always says, "It's better to have too much than not enough." We Southerners also love BIG family meals, entertaining, and tradition. That includes traditional recipes like the potato cakes my grandmother used to make with her leftover mashed potatoes. It's a recipe that I know a lot of families have enjoyed through the generations.

On my Pops and Mammaw's country farm, there was a waste not, want not philosophy that called for ingenuity in the kitchen like frying up mashed potatoes into delicious potato cakes. There was no sense in letting them go to waste, but frying them into potato cakes transformed the potatoes into an entirely new dish. My mama recently joked, "Here in the South, we fry up our leftovers!" And that's exactly what she grew up with my grandmother doing for their family. With a garden filled with potatoes and 40+ chickens always laying eggs, a potato dish requiring both of those ingredients was ideal.

My grandmother used to make potato cakes by seasoning mashed potatoes with salt and pepper and adding egg and flour to hold them together for frying. I decided to take her method a step further and make potato cakes loaded with cheddar cheese and chopped onion. Feel free to get creative and add your own favorite ingredients. White onion? Fresh herbs? Bacon? One of the best things about this simple recipe is that you can customize it to what your family would love. Ready to serve up potato cakes for your family? Here's how!

Recipe

• 2 1/2 cups Simply Potatoes Mashed Potatoes
• 1/8 cup green onion, chopped
• 1/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• salt and pepper, to taste
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 3 tbsp. all-purpose flour
• olive oil or vegetable oil, for frying
• sour cream, cheese, and extra chopped green onion (optional as toppings)

1. Mix the mashed potatoes with green onion, cheddar cheese, salt, and pepper.
2. Lightly beat one egg and add it to the mashed potatoes along with 3 tbsp. of flour
3. Pour oil into a non-stick frying pan and heat over medium heat.
4. Test the heat of the pan by adding a drop of water. If the water sizzles in the pan, it's the perfect temperature.
5. Add large spoonfuls of the mashed potato mixture to the pan. Use a spatula to flatten and shape the cakes. Allow enough room in the pan to be able to flip the potato cakes.
6. Once the cakes are golden brown on the first side, flip and cook them to the same golden brown color on the other side.
7. Lay the first batch onto a plate and continue the steps until all of the mashed potatoes have been cooked into cakes.
8. Serve as is or topped with sour cream, cheese, or chopped onions. They are even tasty with ketchup. The choice is yours!

Mashed Potato Puffs
Many of the same ingredients can be found in these Mashed Potato Puffs--including mashed potatoes. The extra flour and eggs in this recipe almost make it more like mini quiches filled with potatoes and tasty toppings. In fact, my family's love for quiche is what inspired me to make these tasty egg and potato puffs. And puff they do! Grab those mashed potatoes and let's start cooking!

Recipe

• 2 1/2 cups Simply Potatoes Mashed Potatoes
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 3 eggs
• 1/4 tsp. baking powder
• 1/8 cup green onion, chopped
• 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• sour green and extra chopped green onion (optional)

1. Grease a muffin pan. (This recipe will make 12 puffs.) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. Combine the mashed potatoes, flour, eggs, and baking powder into a blender and mix them together.
3. Stir in the green onion and cheese.
4. Spoon a generous amount of the egg and potato mixture into each section of your muffin pan. You should be able to fill 12 compartments.
5. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes or until the tops begin to turn golden brown.
6. Remove from the oven. While the puffs are still warm, slide a knife around the edges to separate them from the pan.
7. Allow the puffs to cool completely before removing them from the pan. Top with sour cream and green onion, if desired. Serve and enjoy!

Have you ever had potato cakes or potato puffs? What are your favorite potato dishes? For more delicious potato recipes, you can visit Simply Potatoes. Oh, and be sure to share with me your favorite potato recipes in the comments below. I'm going to be giving one reader 3 FREE product coupons for Simply Potatoes who have commented here or on social media.

Happy cooking!