Mini Crab Cake Bites
These Mini Crab Cake Bites are an easy appetizer recipe for your Christmas or New Year’s Eve party.
Last week we showed you a Mad for Plaid cookie exchange party in the warm, cozy, traditional Christmas colors and patterns. This week we have a beautiful, shiny, sparkling party plan for a Snowed In Christmas or New Year’s Eve appetizer party with gold, silver, and copper accents. Appetizer parties are one of my favorites! A pretty table, lots of elegant bite size goodies, a signature cocktail, and night with friends and family. Sounds awesome right?
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I’m excited for you to see everything I have planned but I have to start with these Mini Crab Cake Bites. Being from Maryland I take my crab cakes pretty seriously and these are the perfect little bites. We made them using Melinda’s crab cake recipe. It’s a simple mixture of crab meat, crushed RITZ Crackers, mayonnaise, a few spices, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, and green onion. You add an egg as a binder and fold everything together gently so you don’t break the crab meat up too much. One heaping teaspoon of crab mixture is just the right amount to form into a mini crab ball. Then you lightly flour each ball and drop it into hot oil to fry until it is browned 2-3 minutes. You can do all of the frying the day before and then heat the crab cakes up in the oven before your party so you don’t spend your time in front of a frying pan on party day.
Each crab cake goes on top of a round of cheddar cheese on RITZ Crackers to make Mini Crab Cake Bites. They are delicious! RITZ Crackers are the perfect vehicle to get those tasty mini crab cakes from the plate to your mouth. The buttery taste of RITZ Crackers combined with sharp cheddar cheese goes perfectly with the rich flavor of the crab cake and all of that is topped with a small dollop of tartar sauce just to finish it off.
I could eat these by the plate full and for the party they will be laid out on a white platter in the shape of a Christmas tree and sprinkled with chopped parsley for a festive winter holiday look. Simple but elegant.
Since Mini Crab Cake Bites will be the star of the party we are sticking with seafood for all of the appetizers. We’ve got a great recipe for Shrimp and Dill Cucumbers, fresh shrimp tossed in a sour cream dill sauce and served on a light, fresh, crisp cucumber slice and Tuna Avocado Sushi Cups, diced ahi tuna and avocado topped with a soy sriracha sauce and black sesame seeds served in phyllo cups. Both are easy and beautiful appetizers that will look as good as they taste! The best thing is that the ingredients for all of these recipes can be found at Walmart so it’s a one stop shopping trip for me to get ready for the party.
We’ve even got a signature cocktail on the menu. A Champagne Moscow Mule served in bright, shiny copper glasses and topped with a twist of fresh lime. It’s a sophisticated cocktail that is a beautiful addition to the table.
Speaking of the table it’s pretty gorgeous! The decor is a mix of shiny and sparkly with metallic golds, silvers, and coppers and snowy, winter accents like birch logs, bottle brush trees, snowflakes, and pine cones. I’m totally in love with the combination. We started off with some large felt snowflake place mats. These were placed irregularly across the table instead of at a place setting. It helps break up the wood of the table a bit and it adds a little interests to the white and copper platters on the table. Two of my favorite things on the table are my birch log pillars. I found them last year and they are perfect for adding a little height to the table. I placed a couple of clear glass plates on them and filled them with appetizers and it makes a very sophisticated looking presentation. If you don’t have something similar you could always use real birch logs. I would just suggest adding some felt to the bottom of them so they don’t scratch your table.
The rest of the table is filled with a collection of pretty gold and silver decor that I already owned. White bottle brush trees, gold glitter trees, a garland of gold, silver, and white balls, and a scattering of pine cones painted silver, covered in gold glitter, and painted white. The copper accents come from a hammered copper platter that copper stemware for the champagne mules sits on. All of it creates an elegant tablescape that the Christmas lights are going to sparkle off of on party night!
Mini Crab Cake Bites
Ingredients
- 45 Whole RITZ Crackers
- 12 slices Cheddar Cheese
Crab cakes
- 16 ounces Crab Meat
- 1/3 cup crushed RITZ Crackers, about 8 crackers
- 1 teaspoon Dry mustard
- 1/4 teaspoon Garlic powder
- ½ teaspoon Old Bay
- 3 Green onions, chopped
- 1/4 cup Mayonnaise
- 1 Egg
- 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
- 2 tablespoons Lemon juice
- 1/2 cup Canola Oil
- 1 cup Flour
- Tartar sauce for garnish
Instructions
Crab cakes
- In a large bowl gently fold together the crab meat, crushed RITZ Crackers, dry mustard, garlic powder, Old Bay, green onions, mayonnaise, egg, Worcestershire, and lemon juice.
- Scoop the crab mixture up into a heaping teaspoon and form it into a flattened disc.
- Use the flour to lightly dust the crab patty.
- In a large skillet heat the oil. Once it is hot gently place the crab patties into the oil a few at a time and cook until browned, approximately 2-3 minutes.
- Place cooked crab patties on a plate lined with a paper towel. Pat gently with a paper towel to remove excess grease.
Assembly
- Cut cheese into circles small enough to fit on a RITZ Crackers.
- Place cheese round on each cracker and then top with a crab cake and a dollop of tartar sauce.
- Enjoy!
Nutrition
You can find RITZ Crackers at your local Walmart. Make sure to stop in and pick some up for all of your upcoming holiday parties!
