Crab Rangoon Cheesecake

A savory cheesecake filled with the ingredients of a crab rangoon including a wonton wrapper as the crust! As far as I am concerned, any recipe that has cream cheese in it is fair game to be made into a cheesecake. I don’t know why it took me so long to do a cab rangoon version!

The inspiration for this recipe

A few years back, I saw a tweet from food writer Bettina Makalintal that said something along the lines of – speaking it into existence, crab rangoon cheesecake. I wrote the idea down on my “to cook list” and two plus years later, here we are! What is time really anyways? This idea was so much my style I knew I had to make it though. Savory cheesecakes are something I have explored extensively, and I have done tons of twists on crab rangoons, so honestly I was surprised that I hadn’t thought of it already!

Prepare the crust

I had to make this a few times before I got it right, so make sure to follow along! First, take special care to line the pans with parchment paper. This will help a lot later, and make them look much nicer!

Second, create a crust with layers of wonton wrappers. First dip or brush them with oil, then spread them around the base of the pan. I used 5 wrappers per springform pan to make sure I was covering all the edges. Third, use pie weights or dried beans to press the crust in place as it bakes. When I skipped this step, the wonton wrappers massively deformed in the oven.

Make the crab rangoon cheesecake filling

Cream cheese and sour cream first, then some sugar and eggs. I only used a tablespoon of sugar even though it looks like I am pouring it from a cup measure here. The eggs are also wrong cause I was doing a double batch. As I said I had to do a bit of trial and error to get this right, more than I typically need for a recipe!

Then add the crab, scallion, and soy sauce. I used 4 ounces of imitation crab for this. Typically I use imitation crab for anything crab rangoon inspired because it reminds me of the flavor of the takeout rangoons from my college days. Also because I am not a millionaire. Real crab is great but it costs a lot to just be tossed into cream cheese or put in the blender.

The final texture of the crab rangoon cheesecake filling.

Bake the crab rangoon cheesecakes

After the crust cools for a few minutes add the filling and bake! The crusts cooked at 425 for 30 minutes, so turn down the oven to 325 and cook these for another 30.

Serve the crab rangoon cheesecake

After the crab rangoon cheesecake cooks, cool it for a few hours. Then pop the cake out of the springform and remove the paper.

Cut, then top with sweet chili sauce and serve. Letting everyone know now that the crust is no longer crispy, but I didn’t intend for it to be. It has the flavor of a fried wonton, but it is sliceable now and just the right texture to be a cheesecake crust.

Really smother it with that sweet chili sauce!

Twists on this recipe

You could use real crab! You could also use more crab than I did- real or fake. For me, the balance was right.

I also get that people might want a different crust. You could fry up the wonton wrappers and then blend them to the texture of graham crackers to make more of a graham cracker style crust. Personally, I thought the half soggy wontons were perfect.

For a traditional crab rangoon recipe, check this one out.