Baking the Books: Cinder Fortune Cookies

Welcome to Baking the Books, where I bake things inspired by my favorite novels! Since I do a lot of reading and a lot of baking, it was only a matter of time before the two things overlapped. It's just part of my evil plot to get books involved in every single aspect of my life.

Previously on Baking the Books: Butterbeer Cupcakes, Anna and the French Crepes.

While putting together all my ideas for this feature, I realized I really  wanted to do something for Cinder and or Scarlet by Marissa Meyer, two books in a series I totally love (my reviews here and here). I tried to rack my brain for Chinese desserts, since Cinder lives in New Beijing, capital of the Eastern Commonwealth, when Lili from Lili's Reflections, who's staying with me this week, just said, "DUH. Do fortune cookies."

 And while fortune cookies are not exactly authentically Chinese, they are authentically fun and delicious, so fortune cookies it is!

Step one: Write out your fortunes.

Cut out strips of paper about 1 1/2 to 2 inches long. Then write WHATEVER YOU WANT on them.

Here is Lili writing a fortune.

Here are the ones I took the time to make all preeeetty

Here are the ones where we did not.

 Step two: Make the batter!

Now, I ended up making this batter twice, essentially doubling it, to get more cookies. But here's the original recipe:

1 egg white
1/8 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon almond extract
1 pinch salt
1/4 cup flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons melted butter 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Prepare a cookie sheet with parchment paper or a non-stick cover. Spray with non-stick spray. Whip the egg white and the two extracts together until foamy and fluffy, but not stiff.






Add the flour, salt, sugar, and butter and mix until smooth, scraping down the sides with a spatula as needed. I thinned out my batter with about 1 tablespoon of water to get it the right consistency, which should be somewhat like crepe batter.



Pour out a small bit of batter and smooth it out into a circle with an offset spatula or regular spatula. Make sure the batter is very thin.



Bake for about five minutes. Keep an eye on these. Once it starts turning golden brown around the edges, take it out.



Transfer with a spatula to a cutting board.



Now, you have to start assembling the fortune cookies immediately, because they harden really fast as they cool. Put one of your fortunes in the center of the cookie, like this:



Fold the cookie around it, like this:



It will be very hot to touch, but you're kind of just going to have to suffer through that. Baking is a serious business y'all. If Lili and I can do it, you can do it.

Crease the folded cookie around the rim of a measuring cup or mug, like this:




You will have something that looks suspiciously like a fortune cookie. Let cookies cool in a muffin tin or egg carton so they hold their shape:



Let cool completely. If the cookies aren't totally crunchy (which mine weren't), stick them in a 250 degree oven for about ten minutes. You should do this in the muffin tin so the cookies don't unravel, which they'll try to do. Pesky cookies.

This is the face of a guilty dog who sneaked and ate a fortune cookie.

Bonus: Here's a video of Lili and me opening up our not-yet-crunchy fortune cookies and seeing what our future holds. Ginger the dog tries to eat them all.

If you have any ideas or suggestions about what I should make next, let me know in the comments!