Crab & Cream Cheese Wontons

What's for Dinner? 7/12/2010

I'm on kick with making recipes that I spotted on other blogs lately and so far I'm batting 1000!

Katie at Health for the Whole Self recently posted about these Crab & Cream Cheese Wontons and they immediately reminded me of a healthy version of Crab Rangoon. I freaking LOVE crab rangoon so I added them to the menu for this week right away.

YUM! They were tasty little suckers.

The only problem with them is that they are little and cute and delicious and that made me want to eat about 50 of them. It was hard to stop. I don't have a lot of self-control when it comes to bite size things!

First you mix up a teeny bit of cream cheese with some crab meat, chives {or green onion if your grocery store doesn't have chives like ours}, garlic powder & pepper.

Then you get to the hard part. FOLDING WONTONS. :::dun dun dun::: I had no effing clue how to fold these things and my wonton package was lame and didn't explain it to me.

I quickly turned to my friend Google and typed in "how to fold wontons". This video on How to Fold a Wonton from youtube came up so I watched it. At this point I thought I was good to go. Seemed easy enough!

Well, I wasn't so "good to go" after all. My first one started out decent but then it all started going downhill from there. I could.not.figure.out how I made the first one so pretty and the rest sucked so bad!

Alex walks into the kitchen at about halfway through the wontons after he hears my cussing from the kitchen.

Him: "Hey! That one looks like a stealth bomber! And that one looks like a paper airplane. Are they supposed to look like that?"

Me: ::::evil glare:::: "Well if you are so judgey about it why don't you just try it!"

That was a mistake. He did try it and was COMPLETELY winging it...not even sealing the edges.

Me: "Nevermind! I take it back! Unless you are going to watch the video and actually do this in an educated way I do NOT want your help!" {Have I mentioned that I'm a control freak on this blog before?}

He did actually go watch the video and then he came back with an improved attempt. And yet, neither of us could master the dang wonton folding technique! It seems so easy on the video...

Here they are all prepped in the oven and ready to be cooked. My first attempts are on the left side of the pan and then as you look to the right those are the last ones. Notice the ones on the right look more like origami than wonton. :)

As the wonton baked I stuck some brocc & caul in one of my beloved steamer bags...

Then I pulled the wonton out of the oven...Mmmmm! Some of them burst a little bit but they still tasted just fine!

Here is the recipe with my notes in red:

Baked Crab and Cream Cheese Wontons

Seen on Health for the Whole Self

Makes about 20 wontons {I got 28 wontons out of it}

Ingredients

Wonton wrappers (about 4×4” in size) {The ones I bought said "Medium Wontons" and can be found in the freezer section of my grocery store...with the other international frozen items.}

4 tbsp cream cheese, softened {I had to google how many tablespoons were in an ounce, since my cream cheese is labeled in ounces. FYI 1 oz = 2 tablespoons. Also I ended up adding another ounce of cream cheese because I thought it needed it. So 6 tbsp or 3 oz total.}

6 oz. can of crab meat (4 oz. drained) {Found in the canned tuna section of the grocery store}

freshly ground pepper (to taste)

1/4 tsp garlic powder

1/4 cup fresh chives, finely chopped

1. In a small bowl, mix together the crab, cream cheese, pepper, garlic powder, and chives.

2. Dollop a heaping teaspoonful onto the center of each wonton wrapper, then wet the edges and fold into a “hat” shape (per the directions on the wonton wrapper package). {See above for my explanation of how I attempted to fold them}

3. Place the wontons on a baking sheet lined with foil or sprayed with nonstick spray. Spray the wontons liberally with more spray (I used Olive Oil spray).

4. Bake at 400º for about 7 minutes {I baked mine for closer to 10 or 11 minutes}, or until lightly browned.