Everyone loves potluck parties. Recognizing this, Tamara Weiss offers Potluck at Midnight Farm, a collection of 130 potluck recipes contributed by her friends and neighbors in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. The island is home not only to Midnight Farm, the gift shop Weiss owns with Carly Simon, but also to cooks whose recipes strike just the right relaxed yet sophisticated note.
These chocolate-hazelnut fortune cookies are as much fun to make as they are delicious to eat. Guests can't wait to open their personal fortune or "love quote." They are the hit of every party.
For the fortunes, cut 1/4-inch strips of paper (I used red for Valentine's Day). Using a silver or gold pen, write love quotations (our local librarian downloaded great lists of them off the Internet).
Makes 18 cookies
4 large egg whites
1 cup superfine sugar
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
Pinch of salt
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
3 tablespoons heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons hazelnut oil (available in gourmet and specialty markets)
Heat the oven to 400 degrees.
Whip the egg whites in a mixing bowl with an electric mixer on medium speed. Add the sugar, increase speed, and mix until smooth. Place the flour, cocoa, and salt into a sifter. Sift into the egg-sugar batter. Continue to mix until well combined. Next add the butter, heavy cream, vanilla extract, and hazelnut oil. Mix again until combined.
Spray a cookie sheet with nonstick spray. (I use a nonstick baking mat.) Spoon 1 tablespoon of the batter in 3 places on the cookie sheet (the two lower corners and the upper center). Spread gently with the back of the spoon into 5-inch circles. Bake until slightly crisp at the edges, but still pliable in the center, 6 to 8 minutes.
Remove from the oven. Immediately take cookies disks off the tray one at a time (so they stay pliable as you fold the first one). Quickly fold the disk in half, pinching about 2 inches of the top edges together to seal. Immediately take the open loops at each end with your thumb and forefinger of each hand and push inward to form the fortune cookie. Repeat with the next two disks. Then start another batch.
When all the cookies are cooled, slip in the fortunes. Many will have an easy opening, but for those that don't, fold the fortune tightly and stuff it in a corner of the cookie.
