Name: Fortune cookies recipe
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 8 min
Total time: 18 min
Yield: Makes: 10–12
Cuisine: Chinese
Ingredients: 2 free range egg whites; 110g caster sugar; 55g plain flour, sifted; ½ tsp vanilla extract; 65g butter, melted and cooled; small strips of paper with ‘fortunes’ written on them

By Rosie Conroy

published 13 January 2022

in Recipes

A favourite at Chinese restaurants, Fortune cookies are surprisingly easy to recreate at home.

The mixture for our Fortune cookie recipe is very similar to a French tuiles biscuit base, and is made up of butter, sugar, eggs and flour, as well as a little vanilla flavouring. These wafer-thin biscuits cool down fast, so the trick to shaping them is to work fast (while minding your fingers don’t get burnt). Fortune cookies make for a really fun treat at New Years or a dinner party to impress friends and family with. And the best bit about making your own is you can add your own personalised fortunes in.

Ingredients

2 free range egg whites
110g caster sugar
55g plain flour, sifted
½ tsp vanilla extract
65g butter, melted and cooled
small strips of paper with ‘fortunes’ written on them

WEIGHT CONVERTER

I want to convert...

grams

cups

Method

To make the fortune cookies, heat your oven to 190C and line two large baking trays with parchment. Whisk the egg whites and sugar in a bowl with a fork or electric whisk, until fluffy. Add the flour and vanilla and stir again with a fork, then add the butter and mix well.
Using a tbsp, place a small amount of mixture onto the baking sheet and spread it out very thinly with the back of the spoon into a circle. Repeat the process to make circles about 5 inches apart.
Bake in the top third of the oven for 6-8 minutes until the fortune cookies are golden and smell biscuity. Remove from the oven and peel off the baking sheet while still warm.
To shape your fortune cookies you have to work quickly, as they will cool and snap after just a few seconds. Fold each circle in half over a piece of fortune paper, without flattening the creased side fully. Pinch your half-moon shaped biscuit at each of its two corners and quickly bend the creased side over the rim of a glass to get the middle dent and classic fortune cookie shape.

Top tips for making Fortune cookies:

Make these Fortune cookies gluten-free by swapping the plain flour in this recipe for alternatives like almond flour, buckwheat flour and brown rice flour. Similarly, you can swap out the egg whites in the dough with aquafaba instead for a vegan version of these cookies. Aquafaba is the juices in a tin of chickpeas which you whisk like you would the egg whites - until fluffy and white like egg when making meringues. You'll need 6 tbsp of aquafaba for this recipe - with 3 tbsp of aquafaba the equivalent of 1 egg.

You might also like...

Chinese recipes

Egg fried rice

Tuile biscuits

Rosie is an experienced food and drinks journalist who has spent over a decade writing about restaurants, cookery, and foodie products. Previously Content Editor at Goodto.com and Digital Food Editor on Woman&Home, Rosie is well used to covering everything from food news through to taste tests. Now, as well as heading up the team at SquareMeal - the UK's leading guide to restaurants and bars - she also runs a wedding floristry business in Scotland called Lavender and Rose.