Help me create baked crab rangoon-ish appetizers

Cafe Society
1

I love crab rangoon, but don’t love deep frying. I made some real crab rangoon a few years back and they were delicious but the mess, the grease, the whole thing was ugh.

For Thanksgiving, I’ve offered to bring an appetizer, and I’d love to use the crab rangoon filling in some sort of small baked appetizer.

Would it work to make mini-cupcake/muffin sized tarts with pie crust and the filling? Would you bake the crust first and then fill or fill then bake?

Would a different dough be better?

Am I missing something obvious? Brainstorming would be great.

2

How about phyllo dough, cut in triangles, edges pinched with a fork?

Here’s a recipe. . .

http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1945,145187-253201,00.html

3

If you have a small cupcake tin, you could line them with either biscuit dough, or even better, croissant dough. Bake them long enough to get them lightly browned. Then fill the cups with the rangoon filling. Bake them awhile longer to finish cooking the dough and the filling.

Mmmm… I might have to try this.

Good Luck!

4

I’m reinventing the wheel!

Phyllo is a dough I haven’t had great success with in the past, but you’re right that it’s an obvious possibility for this.

5

I think either phyllo or puff pastry would work well for this.

6

I thought of cheating a bit and using crescent roll dough, but I didn’t think of biscuit. Crab rangoon shortcake. :smiley:

7

Since there are going to be so many ways to make this, I’d love to hear votes for which would be the most appealing.

Tart shaped:

with pie crust
with biscuit dough
with crescent roll dough

Crab rangoon shaped:

with phyllo
with puff pastry

or other

8

You’ve got some time before the big day to experiment. Try a few recipes, bring them to work and see what people say.

Apparently, you can also bake crab rangoon. . .

This recipe makes them in the traditional triangle shape.

This recipe uses wonton skins in a muffin pan, so they come out like cups instead of triangles. It even has a video showing them being made!