Cool and Creamy Vegetable "Pizza" Crescent Cups

These Cool and Creamy Vegetable "Pizza" Cups are fun twist on the traditional version of veggie pizza that many of us know and love. They are perfect appetizers for summertime parties or you can even enjoy them as a light meal. They are easily customizable - use whatever fresh vegetables that you love or have on hand - and they seem to always be one of the first things to be devoured at parties.

For the recipe, you'll, basically, need a couple of tubes of refrigerated crescent seamless dough sheets, a few simple ingredients to make a cream cheese/sour cream filling and some fresh vegetables. After a short bit of oven time and a few minutes of cooling, the crescent cups get a dollop of cool and creamy filling before being topped off with your chopped veggies of choice.

From my experience, these can be made up to six hours {or so} in advance. While I do enjoy them just fine the next day {if there are leftovers}, they are best when freshly-made the day of service.

NOTE: VEGETABLES SHOULD BE CUT INTO SMALL PIECES AND BE OF UNIFORM SIZE. THE AMOUNT OF VEGETABLES NEEDED TO MAKE A SINGLE BATCH OF THESE IS VERY MINIMAL. ROUGHLY ONLY 2 - 3 TABLESPOONS OF EACH CHOPPED/SLICED VEGETABLE IS NEEDED. HOWEVER, THE AMOUNT, OBVIOUSLY, WILL VARY DEPENDING ON THE NUMBER OF VEGETABLES USED AND THE TYPE/VARIETY OF VEGETABLES CHOSEN. THEREFORE, I AM NOT PROVIDING EXACT MEASUREMENTS IN THE VEGETABLE SECTION OF THE INGREDIENT LIST BELOW.

Also, note that the recipe yields sixteen "cups," but is easily doubled or tripled for large crowds. And, to clarify, the cups are made in muffins tins with regular-sized wells - not mini muffin tins.

Yields 16 cups.


Ingredients:

FOR THE CUPS -

Non-stick spray
2 tubes {8 ounces each} refrigerated crescent seamless dough sheets

FOR THE FILLING -

6 ounces softened cream cheese
1/3 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon dried dill weed
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
Kosher salt, to taste
Freshly-cracked black pepper, to taste

VEGETABLE SUGGESTIONS {See NOTE above} -

Green onions
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Carrots
Radishes
Cucumbers
Peppers
Celery

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray the wells of muffin tins lightly with non-stick spray. {You will need sixteen wells total.} Set aside.

Unroll the tubes of dough on a clean surface. Using a pizza cutter, cut each sheet of dough into eight equal squares for a total of sixteen dough squares. {You may need to trim a little dough around the edges to make uniform squares.}

Gently press a square of dough into each muffin well. {Do not press firmly.}

Bake on middle rack of oven for 10 - 11 minutes or until edges/bottoms of cups are light brown in color.

Meanwhile, in a medium mixing bowl, combine cream cheese, sour cream, dill weed and garlic powder until smooth. Season with salt and pepper, as desired. Set aside.

Remove cups from oven.

Allow cups to fully cool {on a cooling rack preferably}. Dollop a spoonful of filling into each cup. Be sure to leave room on top for vegetables. {You may not need all of the filling.}

Evenly top with chopped vegetables.

Serve immediately or store - in an airtight container - in refrigerator. Best if served within six hours of preparation.