“It is an Asian themed dinner. Could you bring an appetizer or a dessert?” I don’t do Asian food. Not that I don’t like it, or I think I’m too good for it – quite the opposite. I don’t know about it, where to get the ingredients or how make them into something delicious. I couldn’t even think of an Asian dessert, so I Googled it, and the simplest, best looking dessert: Fortune Cookies.
Not that they looked simple to make, but they didn’t involve unavailable or unknown ingredients. I can’t say I had never thought of making them before. I had. And I had wondered how in the world you bake the cookies without the paper getting burned! Well, now I know.
The dough for the fortune cookie is more like a batter. My sponge cake skills came in useful when dealing with the egg whites and gently folding in the whole 8 tablespoons of flour. The recipe in itself was really simple (with only the smallest amounts of the easiest ingredients) and the steps were pretty straight forward. Until the end.
So I mixed up the batter, no biggie. Pouring the batter onto the pan reminded me of making pancakes – not too tough. Moving the pan in a circular motion to form circles was a little trickier. Lucky for me, my favorite game on the Wii fit uses these same balancing board skills, only in the game you are trying to get the balls in the holes without falling off the board. In the fortune cookie game you are trying to make identical circles on a pan.
The recipe said you could make 4 or 5 on a pan…I was scared, so I did only two. Why was I scared? Because from the time you take them out of the over, you only have 20 seconds to insert the fortune and fold them into the right shape before they harden and it is too late. The first one didn’t go so smoothly. I am great at special reasoning, but I couldn’t fold the hot circle into a fortune cookie. It was more like…a circle folded into fourths. Ha ha. The second one wasn’t much better because I had already used about 14 of my 20 seconds on the first one. The result of my final 6 seconds…well, I didn’t take a picture of it J
As the second tray of cookies was baking I pulled up a picture of a fortune cookie and thought it through, imagining myself folding the hot little circle in my hands. (Closing my eyes and making the motions…that is how I roll.) The result: fortune cookies!
These cookies were for a farewell dinner where we were all wishing our friends luck as they head on to Afghanistan for work. After dinner, we all opened our cookies and shared our hand written notes with the guests of honor. Homerun! This will now be my go-to creative impress-your-pants-off party favors.
The Recipe (Adapted from
2 large egg whites
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon pure almond extract
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
8 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons granulated sugar
3 teaspoons water
The Recipe (Adapted from
2 large egg whites
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon pure almond extract
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
8 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons granulated sugar
3 teaspoons water
Preparation:
1. Write fortunes on pieces of paper that are 2 1/2 inches long and 1/2 inch wide. Preheat oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. 2. Lightly beat the egg white, vanilla extract, almond extract and vegetable oil until frothy, but not stiff.
3. Sift the flour, cornstarch, salt and sugar into a separate bowl. Stir the water into the flour mixture.
4. Add the flour mixture into the egg white mixture and stir until you have a smooth batter. The batter should not be runny, but should drop easily off a wooden spoon.
5. Place level tablespoons of batter onto the cookie sheet, spacing them at least 3 inches apart. Gently tilt the baking sheet back and forth and from side to side so that each tablespoon of batter forms into a circle 4 inches in diameter.
6. Bake until the outer 1/2-inch of each cookie turns golden brown and they are easy to remove from the baking sheet with a spatula.
7. Working quickly, loosen the cookies from the pan. Place a fortune in the middle of a cookie. Fold the cookie in half so the flat side is facing you. Pinch the outside corners and bring them together, keeping them flat in the surface, pushing the center upwards. Place the finished cookie in the cup of the muffin tin so that it keeps its shape. Continue with the rest of the cookies.
No comments:
Post a Comment