DIY Fortune Cookies for Christmas

Image by Molly Yeh
Something is special about Wednesday. You may wake up with a warm fuzzy feeling, and perhaps there will be fresh snow on the ground. Smells of sugar and spice might fill your apartment hallways, and outside, all will be quiet. The groceries will be closed, the convenience stores too… and even your Twitter feed will slow to a trickle.
Wednesday is special, very very special. Wednesday… is Chinese food day.
Egg rolls, stir fry, soup dumplings, oh my. (I’m so excited I could cry.)
But you know what could make the day extra special? Freshly made fortune cookies, complete with festive, one-of-a-kind, no-dictionary-needed fortunes.
They’re really not difficult, and they’re a million times better than the restaurant ones.
So go on, give yourself the fortune you always wanted, and have a very Merry Chinese Food Day!
DIY Fortune Cookies
Makes about 12
Ingredients
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c all-purpose flour*
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 pinch of cardamom
2 egg whites
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp almond extract
12 strips of paper with fortunes
*for a gluten free option, you can use almond flour instead. You may need to bake them for a minute or two longer.
Directions
Preheat oven to 375.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the egg whites and extracts. Sift in the dry ingredients and whisk it… whisk it good, until you have a smooth batter.
Grease a cookie sheet and then spread a tablespoon of batter into a 3-inch circle (it helps to use the lid of a ball jar as a guide). Only bake three circles at a time so that you have time to mold the cookies before they cool.
Bake for 5-7 minutes, until the edges are brown. Working quickly (but carefully, as to not burn your fingers), use a spatula to flip a circle over. Place a fortune in the center, fold the circle in half, and then pick it up and bend the folded side over the edge of a bowl to form your fortune cookie shape.
Place in a muffin tin so that the shape holds while it cools.
Repeat with remaining circles, and then bake another batch.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 2
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward ‘Another Jewish warrior’: Fine wins special election for U.S. House seat
-
Fast Forward A Chicagoan wanted to protest Elon Musk — and put a swastika sticker on a Jewish man’s Tesla
-
Fast Forward NY attorney general orders car wash to stop ripping off Jews with antisemitic ‘Passover special’
-
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.