Campfire Fortune Cookies
Thin batter cooked in a skillet, folded hot around a paper note.
- calories
- 230
- weight
- 1.9 oz
- cal / oz
- 121
- protein
- 3 g
- serves
- 8, scales
- prep
- 20 min
- cook
- 30 min
- total time
- 50 min
- water
- 90 ml cold
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dessert
- Snack
- Grill grate
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Vegetarian
- Real dishes
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Dried egg white powder | 3 tbsp | stands in for 3 fresh whites |
|---|---|---|
| Sugar | 150 g | |
| Ghee or clarified butter | 100 g | keeps unrefrigerated, unlike stick butter |
| Vanilla extract | 1/4 tsp | |
| Almond extract | 1/4 tsp | |
| Water | 6 tbsp | 3 to rebuild the whites, 3 for the batter |
| All-purpose flour | 130 g | |
| Paper strips | 16 | written before you leave home |
Method
- Set the skillet on the grate over low coals, not flame. Flame scorches these in seconds.
- Stir the egg white powder into 3 tbsp of water and let it sit five minutes until it stops being gritty.
- Whisk in the sugar until it dissolves and the mix lightens. Stop there. You are not making meringue.
- Melt the ghee in the pan, pour it into the batter while stirring, then add both extracts and the last 3 tbsp of water.
- Stir in the flour until smooth. The batter should pour slowly off the spoon.
- Wipe the pan, spread two spoonfuls into thin 4-inch circles, and cook 2 to 3 minutes until the edges brown and the centers set.
- Lift one out, drop a paper strip on it, fold it in half, then bend the folded edge over the rim of a mug. Hold ten seconds until it holds its own shape.
- Work one cookie at a time. Once it cools it snaps instead of folding.
This is a bakery cookie dragged onto a grill grate, and the changes are mostly about heat and refrigeration. Fresh egg whites and stick butter do not survive a cooler-free weekend, so the whites are powdered and the butter is ghee, which is stable at camp temperatures because the milk solids are already gone. The oven becomes a skillet over low coals: the batter is thin enough that direct pan contact cooks it through in the same few minutes.
The folding window is the whole difficulty. A fortune cookie is pliable for maybe fifteen seconds after it leaves the heat, and rigid after that. Cook two at a time, keep the mug within reach, and accept that the first pan is a test batch. Everything else about the recipe is forgiving; that part is not.
Packing
Combine flour, sugar, and egg white powder in one bag at home. Ghee travels in a screw-top jar, extracts in two dropper bottles. Write the fortunes at the kitchen table, not by headlamp.
Variations
- Skip the folding and let them cool flat as thin sugar crisps. Same batter, none of the timing pressure.
- Cinnamon in the dry mix covers for the almond extract if you would rather not carry it.
- A spoon of cocoa powder in the flour makes a darker, less sweet cookie.
https://www.matprat.no/oppskrifter/kos/fortune-cookie---kinesiske-lykkekaker