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!

Scottish Shortbread with Chocolate and Pretzels

Tags

chocolate, dessert, easy, food, pretzel, recipe, shortbread, snack, sweet

So my Hubs was all about these Milano ® cookies. The ones with the broken pretzel pieces. Yeah, they’re good but all I could think while scarfing them down was how easy they’d be to make. Or at least to make something similar. I could have copied it more directly by making tiny thin cookies blah, blah, blah… but I decided to do em up the way I thought they ought to be. Fat.

For those of you who are timid in the kitchen, never fear these babies are some of the easiest things you’ll ever make. Here’s how I did it. Step by step.

Cream 1 c butter and 1/2 c sugar.

Gradually add 2 c flour till you get a workable dough.

Divide dough in half and roll each half into a ball.

Flatten dough into a pie plate and press out to edges.

I use a spatula to shape the edges to make more of a uniform thickness throughout the disc… to prevent overly crispy edges.

Bake 300 degrees 30-40 minutes

Now you don’t have to score these but I find it’s easier to cut them later if I do.

While those are cooling, melt about a cup or so of chocolate chips and about 1/3 stick of butter in the microwave for about 30 seconds.

I wanted a smoother texture so I added a large spoonful of shortening and nuked again (30 sec intervals, stirring in between) until smooth.

Pour the chocolate over both crusts and spread evenly over the tops.

Sprinkle crushed pretzel pieces over the tops. – Note: It helps to crush your pretzels ahead of time. I actually didn’t think that far and realized it as I was pouring the first chocolate top… it was a mad rush to break up the pieces before my chocolate cooled too much for them to stick.

I had fun making these. They turned out great and the experience gave me a ton of ideas for new recipes. Also, I’ve discovered something about myself. I really like taking pictures of food. I mean really. I took over 50 pics of this process and the finished product. It actually took me longer to go through and decide which ones to use than it did to make the whole dish.

Try this out. Let me know what you think.