Super Easy Crab Rangoon

Tags

appetizer, crab, Crab Rangoon, cream cheese, easy, entertaining, food, fried, hosting, party, rangoon, recipies, seafood

Crab Rangoon is one of the simplest appetizers to whip up. There are many variations and everyone has their favorite style. I’m going to share a super simple recipe and method made especially easy for kitchen novices.
Start out by softening two 8oz blocks of cream cheese and thaw if need be about 8oz of cooked (or imitation) crab meat. Everyone likes their Rangoon spiced differently so play with it a little if you find something you might like or if you dislike something on my list. I suggest white pepper, ground celery seed, garlic powder, chili powder and salt. You don’t need much. Maybe a half a teaspoon or so of each depending on your tastes.

Just put it all in a bowl and mix it up with a fork. Simple.

Now the part that makes this super easy is the part that people often stress over… the folding of the wrapper. There are a billion ways to fold a wonton or egg roll wrapper. My family has a tendency to eat the innards and leave behind the crispy tails that stand alone with no filling. My answer to this is to fold the wrappers into envelop shapes around the filling eliminating the uneaten bits left about. I use egg roll wrappers. They’re larger and easier to handle. Simple steps for folding in the next pics…

Start out by laying your wrapper in a diamond shape so that the bottom is a corner facing you. Scoop up a blop of filling and place it near the center of the wrapper a little closer to you than the center. Like so…

Set a small dish of water nearby for sealing up the edges. Next, fold up the corners like so…

Now you’ll use that water to seal up the edges. Simply dip your finger into the water and run it along the top corner of the wrap.

Then fold it over to seal. Viola!

Make 3 or 4 of these at a time and drop em in hot oil til they’re just about golden. I do them in batches, but if you have a large deep fryer or something that’ll handle more, go for it. They should come out looking like this…

Perfect little packages made especially for dippin’.

Use your favorite sweet n sour sauce. I might just have to do a blog post on sauces. Hmmmm

You could get crazy and make your own wrappers, but if you’re like me ya just can’t get them quite thin enough. Mine come out like this…

But that’s another post as well. I’ll leave you with a picture of these Easy Crab Rangoon… Believe me, if I could leave you with a taste or even a smell I would. 😉

Try the envelop method and tell me what you think.

Enjoy!

Approxipeasy Cheesecake Balls

Tags

cheese cake, chocolate, cream cheese, dessert, entertaining, food, hosting, party, recipe, treats

MMMmmm Who doesn’t love cheesecake balls? Well I’m sure someone doesn’t… but no one I know 😉

So you basically start out making something similar to cheesecake without the things that require it to be baked. Namely eggs.

Set three packages of cream cheese (8 oz each) and a stick of butter out to soften. Once soft, you’ll want to beat those together with about 2/3 cup sugar. [You can use powdered sugar or granulated sugar in this recipe, but powdered will give you a better texture. I actually poured the tiniest bit of milk into the granulated sugar to dissolve it just enough to be smooth in the cream cheese.] Add a little vanilla if you like. (I did).

Yummy creamy goodness. Now here comes the most important part…

Scoop up a glob of that stuff and give ‘er a taste test. Or two or three. That’s integral to this thing turning out right. Seriously, it’s a must. 😉

Put that in the fridge to stiffen up a bit. In a separate bowl melt about a half stick of butter and toss in some sugar (probably 1/4 cup or so) and some crushed graham crackers (about a cup and a half worth).

it looks like I have more sugar than crumbs in there, but seriously I added more crumbs 😉

Once your cream cheese mixture is stiff enough to roll into balls… do that. Roll balls that are about a teaspoon or so worth into the crumb mixture. I got to the point where I stopped actually rolling them and just dumped a spoonful into the crumbs and let them kind of take their own shape.

You can set up a little assembly station (the kiddos like this part). Once you have a fair amount rolled up (ie: you fill up a pan, sheet, or box as I have) place them back in the fridge to stiffen back up. Put whatever unused cream mixture you have left back in the fridge to stiffen up also.

While those are cooling. Mix up a batch of chocolate to drizzle over the tops. Just put some chocolate chips (I used semisweet) in a bowl or jar (maybe half a bag) with some lard or butter. I used both… a couple big glops. (don’t ask me how much that is… a quarter cup?)

Nuke that for 30 seconds. Stir. Repeat…

Until smooth (you can reheat occasionally if you need to thin it as it thickens while you’re using it).

Drizzle over the cheesecake balls. Repeat the whole process for the rest of the cream mixture and voila you have a big ole batch of ultra yummy treats!

Keep them cool (or even frozen) until time to serve… they get soft really fast. I had a bunch left over from our Easter get together and put them in a ziplock in the freezer… I just pop a frozen one in my mouth when I want something sweet and they’re not rock hard like you’d expect. If you want them a little softer, they soften at room temp in literally minutes. Enjoy!

There are a billion ways to change this up… add ins, cocoa, rolled in nuts… Maybe I’ll have to do a blog post about all the different ways you can alter these babies. Try this recipe and let me know what you think.