Sep 23 2012

Better than any Chinese restaurant’s Crab Rangoon – Baked Version!!!

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Ever since I posted the recipe for my Fried Crab Rangoons, I’ve no lie had to make these 15 times for Mr. Fantabulous. He actually said to me at 10:30 one night as I was heading to bed “Um honey, did you say you were going to make some of those crab wontons as a snack tonight???” Now mind you I made a full dinner earlier AND dessert yet this man is obsessed with these things. Just like we all have the staples in our house – milk, bread, eggs, flour, I now at all times MUST have the crab rangoon filling made up at ready to use at a moment’s notice.

Yeah.. he’s that spoiled! I keep telling people, if there is such a thing as reincarnation, I don’t want to come back as someone famous… I want to come back as Mr. Fantabulous! LOL I want pampered and spoiled like that! 🙂

Well anyway, since I never eat fried foods I wanted to bake these. Well my first attempt was ‘ok’ but they turned out brittle and hard as a rock. They were crispy as soon as you took them out of the oven but since you have to let the insides cool as to not melt the roof of your mouth, the inside became cool enough to eat but the shell went to a petrified state. Now mind you, I didn’t let them go to waste as I just scooped out the warm filling. But this bugged me. I HATE when I can’t do something. It’s the engineer in me. I *have* to figure things out – how they work, why they work and when they don’t – how can I make it work. I *need* to know the how’s and why’s of ‘tings.

I gave it another shot… I tweaked the way I made these. I figured out why they got as hard as they did – they dried out even though I sprayed the pan. I went with 2 options – brushing with melted butter and brushing with canola oil. Both produced the same result although the butter made them a tad darker. They both came out crispy and yummy and more importantly didn’t get ‘hard’ but rather stayed crispy!

So for those of you that love these but steer clear of fried foods… here ya go! You can enjoy these without the guilt!

These, to me, are even easier than making the fried ones as all you need to do is put them in the pan, fill ’em, “squinch” the tops together and bake! I am so totally making these for our next football gathering! Make up a big batch of ’em and them set them out on a warming tray… and watch them disappear!

Now if you’ll excuse me… I’m off to make some of these for lunch for me 🙂