And also because it’s Fat Tuesday, so chocolate today is most definitely a must. But that’s not really the reason I made fortune cookies.
It’s totally because I wanted to write my own fortunes and then pretend like they’d really come true. Yeah, right.
Ok, ok, the real, real reason? Well I don’t know if you know this, but the Chinese New Year is Thursday. Normally I don’t pay a lot of attention to this, but this year I just felt like partaking in the celebration. And when I say celebrating, I really just mean making some dang good homemade Chinese food. Sadly, I live in a place where the Chinese cuisine is not really all that awesome. If you want good Chinese around here, you just have to make it yourself. Not gonna lie, this doesn’t bother me in the least, I am kind of weird about restaurant eating. I know, huh? See, I just really like knowing what’s actually going into my food and how it is prepared. I will 100% admit this is due to my “must control everything” mind-set. Some day I hope to outgrow this…but I am not holding my breath.
Anyway, I have always wondered how fortune cookies are made. Growing up, I always used to love cracking mine open, but I never really understood the fortune. What’s up with that? Half those fortunes never made any sense to me. And to be brutally honest, I always ended up eating only half the cookie because I thought they where kind of bland. Like where is the flavor? Where is the CHOCOLATE?
So I added flavor AND… basically drowned my cookies in chocolate. It was the right thing to do.
Here’s the catch, fortune cookies are easy, but actually forming them into the cookies is kind of a pain. When the cookies come out of the oven you have to work fast to form them, if you don’t you will just end up with a flat cookie. That’s fine, but it’s just not the same. Surprisingly, folding the cookies is not all that tricky. I used a coffee cup to help me get that classic shape and it worked really well. Once the cookies are formed, they should harden up immediately.
And then it’s time for that chocolate bath. YUM.
Oh, and if you are celebrating Fat Tuesday today, I hope you have a great (hopefully fun food filled) day!!
And that you get to eat plenty of chocolate covered toasted sesame fortune cookies… for good luck. Oh, and beignets – because if there is ever a day to eat beignets, today is the day!
