Fireflies: So "Fortunate" To Have You!

"Fortunate-to-Have-You Cookies"

I simply was wracking my brain trying to think of a way to incorporate gratitude into this month's recipe. However, my mind kept going to thankfulness and, of course, straight to Thanksgiving related activities. Then it came to me! Thankful, gratitude, fortunate, FORTUNE COOKIES!

So Noah and I sprang into action. We found a recipe (you can find it here: Allrecipes.com) and Noah went to work on the paper portion of today's recipe. We decided that his teacher would be the perfect recipient of a batch of "fortunate-to-have-you" cookies. Noah wrote reasons for which he was grateful for having his teacher in his life.

Most of these were exactly were right on topic but in the end, the slips of paper ranged from "patient" and "kind" to pictures of trucks and special messages written in the "alien's language". I'm pretty sure that's his standard answer when he can't read his own writing. Either way, the messages were written with a lot of heart and seriously, isn't that what matters most?

Next we went to work on our recipe. We measured and sifted our dry ingredients:

Separated our egg whites:

Added our extracts:

Whisked until frothy:

After mixing in our dry ingredients, we decided on adding some
red food coloring to make things a little more exciting:

After greasing our pans heavily with butter, we spooned a little batter into
thin circles and popped them into the oven.

OK, I won't lie to you. We had some serious issues at this point. We ended up having to vary the temperature of the oven, the cookie sheet, the duration of baking, the amount of batter, thickness of the batter and ultimately, ended up with many fortune cookies with burnt edges and undercooked middles. Finally, what worked for us was to set the temperature at 400, bake for 2 - 3 minutes, flip them and bake for another 2 - 3. Keep the batter VERY thin so you don't end up with pancake-like centers. Also, you have to be pretty quick when they come out and have fingers that can take some serious heat. I just made my husband do it since he has those lovely calloused hands just perfect for fortune cookie folding. Put your paper inside, fold them in half, fold them again over the rim of a mug and finally place them in a muffin tin to keep their shape while they cool completely.

And there you have it! What better way to show someone how incredibly grateful you are that they are in your life than a big plate of mostly cooked through (and some a bit burnt) fortune-to-have-you cookies.