How to Make Homemade Fortune Cookies + Troubleshooting Tips

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The saga of how to make homemade fortune cookies with or without oven and then decorate fortune cookies + fortune cookie fortunes or message ideas for Valentine’s Day or Everyday.

This is a recipe but it’s not a recipe. This is more of a drama.

Where did I get this fortune cookie recipe?

I found several recipes from Pinterest, but the 3 I honed in on the most were the following:

Is that Soh?

iSaveA2Z

the Spruce Eats

They were NOT easy. In fact, I don’t recommend this route for busy moms…

Basically, you have to cook this to the perfect temp, or they will not be crunchy, or they will be burnt. Like the only in between is a fine small window.

I would rather, as a mom, buy fortune cookies already made and then spruce them up with some chocolate melts. You can even add your own fortunes to store bought fortune cookies, according to Rena, by microwaving for 20 seconds in a damp paper towel.

Making homemade fortune cookies is definitely not something you want to try for the first time for something important or urgent.

I do show at the end of this post how to easily do the chocolate melts (like a fast scroll through the photos should explain it to you) – whether you make the fortune cookies yourself or use store bought. I got photos of both.

But they were delicious and better than store bought…

I really was hesitant about the almond extract in the flavoring, but I realize that I seemingly prefer fortune cookies that have that than cookies that don’t. I always tasted a difference in store bought cookies but couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Now I know. Almond Extract. The ones that are only vanilla just taste so vanilla.

So if you want to make them anyway, let me walk you through some ways to be less of a failure with them…

What you Need to Know going into this…

I do walk through the process with tips below, but let’s get the hardest stuff explained first.

So you basically make a batter, dump it on some parchment paper, bake (or air fry), and then while they are hot, fold them into fortune cookies.

First – Master making One Cookie before delving into making more than one at a time.

Most people recommend starting off making 2 at a time until you get a feel for it before switching to 4 at a time. I recommend starting off with 1 cookie at a time. Make sure you get the process down with 1. Don’t be discouraged if it takes 5 tries. It might take 5 tries. But get the 1 figured out, and then move up to two.

Second – Understand the Thickness / Cook Time / Folding Time situation

While doing the first thing, pay attention to this second thing.

The thicker the cookie, the longer it needs to cook, and the longer time you have to fold it.

But also, the thicker the cookie, the harder it is to chew. This is ideally a hard cookie, a really crispy one, but also chewy because of the sugar. Too thick hurts the teeth because of that slight chewy vibe.

The thinner the cookie, the easier it is to eat, but it burns quickly, and you have very little time to peel and fold.

You ideally want to aim for the thinnest possible cookie without burning and with the right time to give you to fold it.

Third – you want to have the fortunes written out and ready to go before making the batter

I know that sounds pretty logical, and some of you are like, “Duh Michelle,” but like mom of 3 here. Sometimes I’m not sleeping right. Sometimes I’m doing other things while making this while photographing and videoing it, and sometimes my brain blips, especially as I grow older. So I’m just saying this right now for whoever needs to hear it. You want to have those fortunes ready to go before you start baking.

Ingredients

Of the recipes I looked at, I was more interested in the smaller portion that yielded 5 cookies at a time so that I could experiment with the batter + make more varying cookies (such as plain cookies I’ll later put chocolate on, some red ones, some marble ones, some pink ones, etc.).

• 1 egg white
• 1/4 c. flour
• 1/8 tsp vanilla
• 1/8 tsp almond extract
• 1/4 c. sugar
• 1-2 TBSP water
• pinch of salt

If you wanted to make enough for 20, then multiply all those numbers by 4.

Process

This process can be done in an oven or a convection oven, or a toaster oven, or an air fryer.

1. Make fortunes on small pieces of paper
2. Whisk ingredients together
3. Cut Parchment paper in 3 x 3 squares.
4. Making one cookie at a time, lay your parchment paper on your baking sheet
5. Drop some batter dead center filling 1 x 1 square.
6. Using the back of a spoon, spread it out into a circle that reaches halfway out the next square each direction
7. Decorate if you want with red food coloring or red sugar sprinkles
8. Bake at 400 degrees for 4 minutes in an oven, or at 375 for 6 minutes in a convection oven
9. As soon as they are finished, put on vinyl gloves, pull out tray, peel cookie from parchment paper
10. Place fortune cookie in the center. Fold up like a taco (or the beginning of rolling a blunt). Then lay it over the edge of a coffee mug and fold down around the rim.
11. Place in muffin pan to hold it in place until it cools.
12. Decorate with chocolate

Step 1: Write out the Fortunes

So I grabbed an 8.5 x 11 computer sheet, and folded it in half vertically. Then I cut a straight ish line about an inch from the center fold. Then I trimmed the other side as needed. Then cut small rows from the two pieces stacked on top of each other so every cut makes 2 fortune papers.

I have noticed that the longer the width of the paper, the more difficult the folding process is of the cookie later. But that might be a personal opinion. You really want to aim for 2 lines with a border for your handwriting.

Then I used an eraseable pen like an idiot. You DO NOT want to use an eraseable pen. Once the heat of the cookie touches that paper, all that ink disappears immediately. Then it has no fortune.

So I found that the Precision V5 worked well.

Fortune Ideas

Because I was making this for my kids for Valentines, I wanted to do lovey dovey things I want them to know.

I also love Rumi Quotes, so I did a few of those.

My List of lovey dovey sentiments I stole from memes…

• Together is my favorite place to be
• Stop wishing & start doing
• Dream big dreams. Pray big prayers.
• Love never fails.
• We love because He first loved us.
• I would find you in any lifetime
• My favorite place is inside your hug
• I love seeing you happy
• With you, I am home.
• Go with me. Somewhere.
• I think about you all the time.
• Happiness is a moment with you
• I have so much of you in my heart
• You are perfect to me, completely
• I like you & naps
• Home is wherever I’m with you
• You make me a better person

Rumi Quotes

• Only from the heart can you touch the sky.
• Wherever you are, and whatever you do, be in love.
• Close your eyes. Fall in love. Stay there.
• In your light, I learn to love.
• What you seek is seeking you.
• When you feel a peaceful joy, that is when you are near truth.
• This is a subtle truth, whatever you love, you are.
• If light is in your heart, you will find your way home.
• Be soulful, be kind, be in love.
• Let your teacher be love itself.

Other ideas include…

• Ominous Fortunes – Such as “You totally won’t be taken down by an assassination at 2:00 PM on Tuesday,” and “You won’t get hit by a flaming crossbow this week.” and “You would have gotten a million dollars tomorrow had you donated blood last Monday.”
• Cliché Love Song Lyrics – “Touch me once and you know it’s true, I never loved anyone like this, I’m crazy for you.” and “Baby you make me feel alive and brand new.”
• Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching quotes – it’s probably more realistic and expected – “One does not walk into a forest and accuse the trees of being off center.” and “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.”
• Inspiring Bible Verses and Jesus Quotes – “Love one another as I have loved you.”

Other Ideas For Kids include…

• Ongoing Arguments & Inside Jokes you have with the kids – hey the fortune cookie is always right – “It’s pronounced High Per Bowl Lee.”
• How great their mom is – “You have the best mom.” and “How lucky are you to have a mom like yours?”
• What you want them to do – “Good things come to people who clean their room right now.” and “Homework is bullshit, but you still have to do it.”

Maybe the easiest thing is to think of a theme and who you are making cookies for, and google under IMAGES and quotes.

Step 2: Whisk Ingredients Together

Whisk ingredients together. I prefer using a Pyrex Glass with a pour spout on it.

When I attempted it without water, it was super thick. So I first added 2 TBSP of water, and it was a great consistency, but it kept making the cookies too thick, or so I thought.

Then I added an extra TBSP of water, and it was super thin and easier to work with, but they didn’t cook as consistent as the previous batter.

This is the time too to add any food coloring if you want a solid color cookie.

The thickness and thinness aren’t as important as making sure you cook it thorough without burning. I think after it’s all said and done, the slightly thicker version was easiest to work with; however, once it starts to get a little stale, you could break your teeth getting through the thick cookies.

The best thickness was where you could see the wrinkles in the parchment paper under the batter, and then just a little more showing only about 25% wrinkled paper showing, but not completely covered.

Step 3: Size Parchment Paper

I used Parchment paper, and honestly I’m a little baffled by recipes that don’t. This stuff is super sticky.

Ok so I originally thought that the best thing is to line parchment paper like you would any cookie, across the entire baking sheet, and then just make blobs of cookie dough / batter 1 to 3 inches apart. But I don’t recommend that here because you have to peel the cookies off like stickers. While it’s super hot and kind of burns the fingers at times. We all know the easiest stickers to peel off were individual stickers as opposed to getting one sticker off the center of a sticker sheet.

So I first definitely recommend cutting sheets for each cookie.

I found that if I cut them using the grid on them in 3 x 3 squares, I could get the right size for the muffin pans to hold them together. The ones I made too small, they held together nicely in an ice cube tray.

But ideally, you want to go 2 squares by 2 squares of a circle, and I did that going from 1/2 a square to 1/2 a square leaving a 1/2 square margin.

You can see what I mean here from my photo for after it has cooked… Note – this cookie was slightly too thick from perfection.

Step 4: Grease the Parchment Paper

I found without greasing the paper, they were difficult to peel and sometimes tore on me, so to avoid that, I used a little vegetable oil on the parchment paper before adding the batter.

Note: Vegetable oil beads on parchment paper like water on a Rain X treated windshield. That’s ok. Just smear it all around a bit to the best of your ability. It does make a difference.

If you don’t use the oil, you will need to replace your parchment paper each time you make them (possibly flip the one to use the other side).

If you use the same one too many times in a row, it will create a nice indent at times and then becomes easier to eyeball the batter.

Step 5: Dump batter on the Parchment Paper

In this picture, I didn’t do a 3 x 3 square. I was experimenting at this point 🙂

Usually if you can see the parchment paper wrinkling a bit through the cookie batter, you want to add one more TBSP of the batter and thicken it up a bit.

Step 6: Add swirls if you want

I saw some photos where women did a dotted pattern, or a heart pattern with dots and toothpicked into heart shapes. I wanted to do a marble / watercolor pattern to play because I’m a little artsy.

Basically, you make a dot with food coloring (one was usually enough – I feared any more would turn my lips red to eat the cookie), and then using a toothpick, swirl it around. Don’t be afraid to drag the toothpick off circle. You want to get the edges without a margin because the biggest part you will see of the finished cookie will be the edges. The center of the cookie will be folded inward.

You can also use a toothpick to help make your circle bigger and shape it more of a circle.

Step 7: Bake the Cookies

I found that if you undercook these things, they will stay soft and chewy. But if you overcook, they burn rather quickly.

The cooking time and temp is very dependent on the thickness of your cookie. I used an air fryer at 375 for 5-6 minutes in most cases because I started to make thicker cookies because they didn’t cool as fast and gave me more time to fold them. I think the ideal thickness cooks in 4 minutes, but see, I cannot get my hands and eyes to make these things cook in 4 minutes. I go from 2 minutes to 6 minutes. The slightest adjustment makes a big change. Most of the ones photographed here were 5 to 6 minutes all together after troubleshooting below.

Step 8: Shape the fortune cookies

So you basically put the fortune in the center, fold up like a taco, and then push it down on the edge of a coffee mug.

You probably want to wear latex gloves of some sort while doing this as this cookie is fairly hot during this process, and if it cools too quickly, it will start crunching instead of bending.

The thinner the cookie, the less time you have. Especially if the edges are thin because that’s the part that cools the fastest, but the part that needs to be more malleable for bending. Once that starts crunching, well…

Did they crunch on you before you could finish shaping them?

Option 1: reheat via microwave in a damp towel for 20 seconds like mentioned earlier for store bought, or an extra minute in oven or air fryer if you got the time before burning it, and then finish folding it.

Option 2: It’s a dud. Eat it.

Are they too chewy after cooling?

Once you cook and cool them, if are still too sticky or chewy, you can put them back in the oven with the fortune and cook for 2 more minutes and reshape.

Decorate with Chocolate

You can pretty much plop chocolate on anything using this method, and it’s much easier than you think…

Melt the Chocolate in Decorating Bag

Fill to line in decorating bag with chocolate wafers. Microwave for 30 seconds at a time. Usually one minute is enough, but some of the chocolate flavors take more like a minute and a half.

But I like to microwave for 30 seconds and knead it a bit to see if the heat from the melted chocolate will melt the rest. The slower and cooler the melt, the better.

Fold the bag over (you don’t want chocolate pooping out of the top of it as you squeeze — phrasing), and cut the tip.

Wait for chocolate to cool a little. I like chocolate to be a little warmer than room temp, but the hotter the chocolate, the thinner it is. If you want super thick chocolate lines, then aim for room temp. If you want super thin chocolate lines, then the hotter the better.

Also remember, the size you cut that tip determines thickness as well.

Then just lay cookies on parchment paper and squeeze out lines and decor. You can also top with sprinkles.

Decorating pre-bought cookies – already chocolate covered…

In my photos, I had made roses and hearts out of a chocolate mold, only filling it up partially…

Then play with the cookies and chocolate wafers while you wait for that to freeze for 10 minutes before popping them out and using them… Hence the pacman shot. But then I kept going after they were frozen…

But then I melted chocolate as mentioned above and decorated very similarly…

You can also decorate with sprinkles or gum flowers.

Making homemade fortune cookies is an art. It truly is an art to find that thickness and cook time, but one that allows a lot of room for mistakes because until you burn it, you can keep reheating it and softening it. If you want to make fortune cookies without an oven, the air fryer works. Decorating with chocolate is delicious and easy.

Did you find this Recipe Helpful and Delicious?

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