July 20 - Fortune Cookie Day
July 20th is Fortune Cookie Day, a day to celebrate the crisp cookie dessert that often accompanies Chinese food and offers a prophecy — or maybe even lotto numbers — to lucky diners. Although the simple snacks are most often associated with Chinese food, they are likely Japanese in origin, and were originally called “fortune tea cakes” in reference to Japanese tea cakes. In fact, fortune cookies are not even served in China, and only appear in a small number of countries across the world. In the 1890′s or early 1900′s Makoto Hagiwara of Golden Gate Park’s Japanese Tea Garden was the first person to introduce the modern fortune cookie in the United States. During World War II, when thousands of Japanese-Americans were wrongfully detained in internment camps, Chinese-Americans began to manufacture the cookies. Today, about three billion fortune cookies are made each year.
Even though fortune cookies are Japanese in origin, they aren’t usually served in Japanese restaurants, so we’ve been seriously lacking on divinations and lottery numbers for quite some time now. That’s okay though — even though most of the fortunes I’ve received throughout my lifetime have been amusing and light-hearted, there have been a few foreboding, ominous prophecies that have made fortune cookies occasionally creepy.
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2 egg whites, room temperature
6 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup flour, sifted
1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract
Cut a stencil out of a plastic coffee can lid in the shape of a 3-inch disk. Whip the egg whites until stiff and chill. In a mixer, cream the butter, then add the sugar and continue mixing. Add the flour and blend in, then add the vanilla and blend again. Add the chilled egg whites and mix on low until well incorporated and the batter is smooth. With a small offset spatula, spread batter through the stencil so it is a circle onto a silpat or parchment paper, about 6 per cookie sheet. Bake in a preheated 350-degree oven until light golden brown, 7 to 8 minutes. Quickly remove the pan from the oven and one at time place a fortune across the center with a bit hanging out. Fold cookie circle in thirds over fortune with flaps only slightly overlapping each other. Turn over and bring opposing sides together and pinch. Let cool.
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