Tried Making Fortune Cookies
31st December 2024 - New Experience Number 51.
For my penultimate new thing of 2024, I decided I’d try making fortune cookies. As we were going to ring in the new year at a friends house, I thought I could pop some personal messages into them and take them with us as an entertaining snack.
Would these be an impressive bake, or more of a mis-fortune cookie?
I gave them a try towards my goal of trying 52 new things in 2024.
What Are Fortune Cookies?
Unlike a traditional flat and circular cookie which is often quite thick with a delicious chewiness, fortune cookies are light, hollow, and more like an edible wafer. Inside you’ll find a piece of paper containing words of wisdom, or a foretelling of what the future holds for you.
Often considered to be a Chinese tradition, there appears to be uncertainty about the origins. In fact, a Japanese Tea Garden is said to be the first place that served the cookies in the United States, whilst a Hong Kong Noodle Company based in Los Angeles also claims to have invented the biscuits around a similar time. You can read more about the history of the fortune cookie at history.com
Made from a simple batter, fortune cookies are often presented to diners when they ask for the bill, leaving the customer with an optimistic note about their future.
Finding A Recipe
If you’ve read about other food and drink related things that I’ve tried, you won’t be surprised that I used a recipe I found on the trusty BBC Good Food site. I’m not affiliated with them in any way, I genuinely find their recipes easy to follow with delicious results.
The recipe had a rating of ‘more effort’ which I wasn’t unduly concerned about as I’ve followed so many of them that have worked out well.
With just 10 minutes of preparation time, and 10 minutes of cooking time, I hoped I’d be whipping up some whimsical delights in next to no time.
The Ingredients For Making Fortune Cookies
There weren’t too many ingredients needed for the recipe and they were all things that are readily available in the supermarket;
- Egg whites
- Vanilla extract
- Almond extract
- Sunflower oil
- Plain flour
- Cornflour
- Caster Sugar
- Black sesame seeds
I already had all of the ingredients for the make, aside from the black sesame seeds. As these were only for decorative use I decided not to bother getting any specially.
The Fortune Messages
I searched online for mottos to write, and combined some daft ideas of my own with those that came up in the search. They won’t be winning any prizes for wordsmithery, that’s for sure!
I would have liked to have made them personal to the people I was spending new year with, but the time pressure squashed any creative thinking.
The recipe gave some limited instructions for the fortunes, saying to write or print them onto paper that was 6cm by 1cm.
Deciding to use baking paper, I thought it would be better than regular paper inside the cookie and better if they happened to be greasy.
Just as I was about to write my first fortune using a Sharpie pen, a thought crossed my mind. Do you need to use a particular ink to write them?
A quick google revealed that edible ink is the best thing to use for fortune cookies. Well, I didn’t have a pen with edible ink to hand, and I didn’t have time to get one for this make. So I shall admit, I wrote my fortunes with the Sharpie.
It turned out that it really didn’t matter what I had written them in, as you’ll find out.
The Process
To begin, I made the batter by whisking the egg whites, vanilla and almond extract, oil and some cold water.
Once this had frothed up, I sieved in the flour, cornflour, and sugar, and added a pinch of salt. After whisking it all together to a smooth batter, I left it to chill for an hour.
Sixty minutes later and I rolled up my sleeves as this was the tricky part.
The cookies need shaping whilst they were still hot, so I was going to be a one-woman production line, of baking and shaping around 15 cookies, just two at a time.
The oven was up to temperature. I took a spoonful of the batter and put it onto my baking sheet, using the back of the spoon to swirl the mixture out into a thin circle. Then I repeated the process for a second cookie, and slid the tray into the oven.
They were fairly quick to bake, and I kept an eye on them through the door. Around ten minutes later, as the edges had started to turn golden, I took them out. Sliding the first cookie off the baking paper, I placed the fortune in the middle of the circle, folded it in half, and pressed the sides together.
The Hardest Part About Making Fortune Cookies
Next was creating the unique fortune cookie shape. Putting the folded edge of the cookie over the side of a mug, I pulled down the two ends to create a sort of crescent moon shape. Well, that was the intention.
There was certainly some curvature to the shape, but it was more like a light bend than a confident crease.
Perhaps I just needed to get into the rhythm of making them. Attempting to shape my second fortune cookie was even less successful, as the lightly baked batter simply crumbled away.
I put my first two endeavours into a muffin tray, to help them keep their shape as they cooled. Although in the case of the second cookie, it was more a case of keeping all the crumbs together.
Repeating the baking two and shaping two process, this was very hit and miss. I tried swirling the batter thicker and thinner before baking, I tried baking for more and less time, I worked quicker when they came out of the oven, but the visual results were either terrible, or less terrible.
The Results
I decided I wouldn’t take the fortune cookies with me to our new year’s eve party. Once they had cooled and set into their supposed fortune cookie shapes, they were very delicate. Flaking apart almost as soon as I picked them up, I wasn’t sure they would survive the journey. You could say our friends had the ‘misfortune’ of not getting to sample them. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist).
Despite the disappointing appearance of the cookies, they tasted really good. They were light and crisp and slightly sweet.
I didn’t have to worry about potentially poisoning my friends, but I did take the risk myself. The ink was dry when I put the fortune into the cookie, and I considered the likelihood of anything negative happening to be minimal.
With gaps and holes in some of them, and just a few which almost resembled an actual fortune cookie, this had been a brilliant experience. Whilst it didn’t quite turn out as I had hoped, it had been fun to try, and I’ve learnt more about them with ideas to implement if I have a go at making them again.
Why You Should Try Making Fortune Cookies
Making the mixture is really easy. The hard part is turning the cookie into a fortune cookie through the shaping, but with patience and paying attention, you should be able to create fantastic snacks.
It’s not only an impressive little treat to make if they come out well, they’re also cookies with meaning. You can include personalised fortunes, or messages that mean something to the people you are giving them to, giving you extra kudos.
I will definitely be trying to make these again, as I don’t like to be defeated by a recipe!
Want To Try It Yourself?
- The recipe that I used was from BBC Good Food.
- There are lots of recipes online, so why not take a look for one that you’d feel comfortable following.
Cost Of Experience
- I already had all of the ingredients that I needed to make the fortune cookies.
- If you needed to buy everything from scratch, it would cost around £13.
- It will vary of course depending on where you shop.
- If you need to buy everything for this recipe, you will have plenty of most of the ingredients left which you could use in other bakes and makes.
Recommendations
- Fortunes first. Write out your fortunes as one of the first things you do. There’s no time to do this once you start baking.
- Experiment. Use trial and error on your first few cookies to find out how much batter you need to use.
- Get creative. You could swap the vanilla and almond extracts for different flavourings. Let your imagination free for your fortune messages too!
- Mind your fingers. You need to shape the cookies as they are still hot, so take care during this part.
- Let me know how you get on. If you try making fortune cookies from scratch, I hope you have more success than I did on my first attempt.