cooking out of the box: pumpkin-cream cheese wontons

Last month I participated in the Improv Cooking Challenge that had been started by the Lady Behind the Curtain. The challenge was to come up with a recipe that used apples and caramel, and I made a Dorset Apple Cake.

This month, the two ingredients assigned were pumpkin and cream cheese. As luck would have it, I had just received a pumpkin from the mother of one of the preschool kids where I work. Not that I was going to mention it to the others in the challenge, but I was planning to make some yummy pumpkin things anyway!

Well, I thought I would get ahead of the game, and I decided to make these pumpkin-cream cheese wontons. (I found the recipe here, but as usual I didn't follow directions very well.) I pureed the pumpkin, went to an Asian market for the wonton wrappers, and assembled the rest of the ingredients. I mixed and dolloped and folded and baked, and I sampled and refolded and photographed and ate and ate and ate.

And just when I uploaded the pictures and thought about how to write about the cute little guys, I got an email from the Lady Behind the Curtain. Sadly, for reasons she didn't go into, she is unable to continue hosting the challenge.

Really? The exact morning that I was about to write my blog post? The challenge is cancelled?

So sad.

Fear not. All is not lost. I got these wontons out of the process. And now you can too!

Pumpkin Cream Cheese wontons

I used the pumpkin puree that I told you about yesterday, but you can buy a can of it if you prefer. It would make these guys super duper easy to throw together.

1 cup pumpkin puree

2 tablespoons honey

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ginger

2 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature

18 wonton wrappers (these can be easily found in almost any Asian grocery store, and even the frozen aisle of most general supermarkets)

a bit more cinnamon for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 400.

Now, mix up everything except the wonton wrappers. It's just that easy.

Lay out a wonton wrapper and place a dollop of about 1-2 teaspoons of the pumpkin-cream cheese mixture in the center.

Using your fingers, wet two sides of the wrapper with water. Fold it in half diagonally (to form a triangle) and press the two sides of the wrapper together.

You can leave it in this triangle shape, or you can make it shaped like a traditional wonton by bringing the two corners at the base of the triangle together, wetting the corners, and overlapping to form a circle of sorts. A bandana headband? A little sailboat? This guy's hat?