Artichoke Purses

Hi all! Hope you had a wonderful holiday season. I'm still recovering from all the travel and craziness, but it's worth it because I get to see my entire family and enjoy their company. Speaking of my entire family, remember when I went out to Vegas after our niece was born? Well believe it or not, that little sweetie is turning TWO YEARS OLD next month. How is that even possible?! Her momma (my sister-in-law) has plenty of easy, tasty recipes and one of my favorites she has shared with me is for a three ingredient baked artichoke dip. I just gave it a little facelift for the purses... check it out!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup mayo (I love the Kraft mayo with olive oil but anything would work)
• 1 cup grated parmesan -- notice I said grated, not shredded like the kind you find in a bag
• 2 cans/jars of artichokes. I use the marinated kind because they're just so delicious on their own that they must make everything better, right?

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• If the artichokes come whole, quarter them. But most of the time you can find them already quartered. Drain the juice from the can/jar.
• In a bowl, mix the artichokes with mayo and cheese. Place in a baking dish of your choice and bake for 30 minutes or until slightly bubbly.

This might not sound like much, but last Christmas we could stop picking at it! It's addictive.

You could easily throw this in a crockpot instead of baking. Just serve with chips, crusty bread, and veggies!

But I have another way to 'dress up' this super easy app. Since I had some leftover wrappers from making eggrolls the night before, I decided to make little artichoke purses.

Ingredients:

• Same as above, silly.

Directions:

• Keep that oven on at 350.
• Take a muffin pan and lightly spray the cups. Then gently place your eggroll wrapper in each cup.
• Add a spoonful or two (use your best judgement on how much to add) in each cup/wrapper.
• Then give the tops a little twist, throw in the oven, and bake until the wrapper is crispy!

Uh-oh, I burnt the top. Hmm, any suggestion on how to avoid that next time? If you can look past the crispy tops you can see how adorable these are anyway...

Oh well. Just when I thought I had managed to not burn anything for awhile :) Either way, these still packed the same great flavor as the dip but simply dressed up a bit. Since these were done in a large muffin pan they definitely needed a fork. You could cut up the wrappers into smaller sizes and make them in a mini-muffin pan for a more bite-sized treat.

I hope everyone had a terrific year. See you in 2011, friends!