China | Recipe (Week 4) The Controversial Cookie

I never would have guessed that my favorite part of a Chinese meal, fortune cookies, are quite the controversial little morsels.  When I thought about what to write for the recipe portion of this series I immediately chose fortune cookies.  As a child I ate Chinese food at least a few times a year.  Sometimes my family ate Chinese take-out at home.  Other times we went to Chinatown in Chicago to eat at a restaurant.  I almost always drank tea with my Chinese food to make the whole experience more authentic.  Excitement always crept in as I finished my meal knowing that I would soon crack open that crunchy little cookie where a tiny typewritten message awaited me.

Well, after all those years of thinking I was so authentic, I came to find out that fortune cookies are not even Chinese!  Listen to this understatement from Wikipedia.  “Fortune cookies are often served as a dessert in Chinese restaurants in the United States and some other countries, but are absent in China.”  What!  Absent in China!  I could quickly run around our playroom and find about 50 odds and ends that are made in China, but apparently, fortune cookies are not among them!

This article about fortune cookies from Wikipedia will go into much more detail, but in a nutshell, cookies similar to the modern fortune cookie were first made in Japan.  Most of the people who claimed to introduce the cookie to United States were Japanese, and reportedly, a man named Makoto Hagiwara served the first modern fortune cookie at a Japanese tea garden in San Francisco in the late 1800’s or early 1900’s.  Other disputes arose creating even more cookie controversy, but I’ll let you read about that in the article link above.

For now, let’s just enjoy eating cookies.  I chose to keep this recipe very simple.  I purchased fortune cookies and Chinese almond cookies (which, HOORAY!, are actually made in China), from a local take out restaurant and then my daughters and I dipped them in white chocolate.  We made final touches by adding rainbow sprinkles to the fortune cookies and sliced almonds to the almond cookies.  I used Ghiradelli white chocolate and, wow, that raised the description level to decadent for these baked goods.

Ingredients

1 batch (8-10) fortune cookies from your local Chinese take out restaurant, grocery store or Amazon
1 batch (8-10) Chinese almond cookies from places listed above
1 bag Ghiradelli white melting wafers or bar of white baking chocolate
Ingredients from Amazon can be found below:
Ghirardelli Chocolate Melting Wafers (for Candy Making and Dipping), 2 Pound Bag
Twin Dragon Fortune Cookies – Product of U.S.A.
60 PCS Individually Wrapped Fortune Cookies
Twin Dragon Almond Cookies 8 Oz (One Box)

Instructions

1.  Place white chocolate in a microwave safe bowl.  Microwave for 30 second intervals until chocolate is completely  melted.

2.  Place a plastic baggie over a glass.

3.  Pour the melted chocolate into the baggie.

4.  Snip a small corner off the baggie and pipe the chocolate around the open portion of the fortune cookie where the ends meet.

5.  Roll the cookie in sprinkles so they stick to the chocolate.

6.  For the almond cookies, melt the chocolate in a small microwave safe dish.

7.  Next, dip one end of the cookie into the melted chocolate and use a dull knife or spatula to spread the chocolate so it covers about one third to one half of the cookie.

8.  Finally spread some sliced almonds on wax paper and press the cookie into the almonds so they stick to the chocolate.

If you prefer to make these cookies from scratch, I found plenty of recipes.  Here is one recipe for fortune cookies and here is another for almond cookies.  From what I read, it is best to make the fortune cookies in small batches because they need to be folded into shape immediately after removing them from the oven.  I hope to make my own batch from scratch in the near future.  If you make some, please leave a comment or email me to let me know how to they turn out!  Photos are also welcome!