If you're still interested

Remember way back in August when we had our Family Olympics Party and some of you wanted to know how to make the fortune cookies? Well, we made the cookies and took the pictures a couple of weeks after the Olympics party, for Family Home Evening again. I am finally getting around to posting about it. So, if you still want to make them and you have not already found your own recipe, here you go:

My sister found the recipe at About.com. I tried to cook it the way it suggests and they all ran to the center of my pan. Plus it never really got hard enough to break even if I had been able to form them into fortune cookies. Then I remembered that I made some in high school to ask a guy to a dance and I had made them on a griddle. So, I thought I would try that, and it worked.

Note: DO NOT make these cookies unless you are comfortable with failure in the kitchen. I even had to make a couple of batches just to get enough good cookies to give away.

The first thing you want to do is write the fortunes. This time we made them to give to a family from church that had recently had a baby that was in the NICU. We wrote encouraging fortunes.

Preheat the griddle. I think I had my griddle on about 325 degrees but you will want to play with yours to see what is best. Lightly grease the griddle, if you grease it too much the cookie will not stick enough when you try to spread it.

Ingredients:
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

In a medium bowl, lightly beat the egg white, vanilla extract, almond extract and vegetable oil until frothy, but not stiff.

Sift the flour, cornstarch, salt and sugar into a separate bowl. Stir the water into the flour mixture.

Add the flour 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. Note: if you want to dye the fortune cookies, add the food coloring at this point, stirring it into the batter.

Place level tablespoons of batter onto the griddle. I used the back of the measuring spoon to spread it very thin. If you do not spread it thin enough it will not cook through and it will not crack.

Cook until you can see through the cookie that the other side is browning well.

Flip to cook thoroughly. The second side will not get as brown. Don't make too many at a time because the next step takes some time and you don't want the other cookies to burn and you don't want to take them off of the griddle until they are ready because they will cool too fast.

Working quickly, remove the cookie with a spatula and flip it over in your hand. Place a fortune in the middle of a cookie.

To form the fortune cookie shape, fold the cookie in half, then gently pull the edges together.

Place the finished cookie in the cup of the muffin tin so that it keeps its shape.

We put ours in a cute little take-out box.

We dilivered them to our friends. We ding-dong-ditched them and the boys learned that you can be nice and give service to others and you don't always have to tell people about it (yes, I am telling you now, but the Amigo's don't know that). As we were driving away Ned asked, "When are we going to tell them it was us?" I think they understood what we were trying to teach them by the end of the night though.