It's 8 a.m. and I'm drinking a mimosa, trying to recuperate from last night. My city is a shit show. The streets are not for cars; they are for children playing, teens hiding bottles of Mad Dog, police officers on horses trying to find said teens, grandparents getting drunk and being weird, adults being immature, laughter, fighting, screaming, and music. The city is alive, but also dead. No cars, no business, nothing of "importance" can take place. It's Mardi Gras. It's a time for fun.

The beauty of Mardi Gras comes from the hedonistic chaos that this mostly Catholic city displays once a year. It's a release. All year we have been trying to get by. Working our restaurant jobs, our desk jobs, paying bills, trying to survive. This is the time it all comes together and results in what is basically a city-wide orgasm.

One of the traditional components of Mardi Gras is catching plastic toys, trinkets, and beads that are thrown from floats. Screams of "THROW ME SOMETHING MISTER!" can be heard, which, besides being kind of sexist (people of all genders ride on floats, y'all), is a pretty effective way of getting beads and other crap you don't actually need. One thing you hardly see being thrown out at Mardi Gras, though, is a fortune cookie. You may ask, why would fortune cookies be thrown out on Mardi Gras? Well, Mardi Gras is about good fun and good fortune and I'll be damned if y'all don't agree that receiving a fun, potentially vulgar (definitely vulgar) fortune cookie on Mardi Gras wouldn't be exciting. These cookies also gave me an excuse to express my kind of out-there sense of humor without (well, hopefully without) offending people.

So, I present to you, Mardi Gras Misfortune Cookies, a recipe based on Molly Yeh's Christmas Fortune Cookies. These cookies have a classic king cake cinnamon flavor, and a not-so-traditional message. I'm only posting pictures of the (two) relatively tame fortunes, but please feel free to get crazy! Enjoy, bitches!

What:

FORTUNE COOKIES

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup all-purpose flour*
1/2 t kosher salt
1/2 t cinnamon
2 egg whites
1/2 t vanilla extract
1/4 t almond extract

ACCOMPANIMENTS

12 strips of paper with fortunes
Purple, green, and gold sanding sugar
1 cup powdered sugar
1/8 cup buttermilk
Cellophane for wrapping
String or ribbon for tying

*Molly recommends subbing almond flour for all purpose flour to make these gluten-free. You may need to bake these for a couple extra minutes.

How:

Preheat oven 375*
Whisk together dry ingredients
In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg whites, vanilla, and almond extract
Sift in dry ingredients and whisk until smooth
On a cookie sheet lined with greased parchment paper, pour three circles of batter about 2-3" wide and paper thin (don't do more than three at a time as it won't allow you time to form the cookies before they harden)
Bake for 5-7 minutes until the edges are brown
Remove from oven and place the fortune inside of them and bend the cookies in half, pressing them down slightly at the seams
Bend over the lid of a mug (with the seam of the folded cookie facing upward) to form a crescent shape
Place in a muffin tin to hold shape while it dries
Repeat process with remaining batter
Once all cookies are cooled, whisk together powdered sugar and buttermilk and spread over cookies
Sprinkle purple, green, and gold sugar on top of them and let dry for at least an hour
Wrap in cellophane and tie with ribbon or string to make individual throws

Notes on this recipe

This recipe makes enough for about 12 cookies, but it can easily be doubled, tripled, or quadrupled
You want the batter to be about the consistency of a thin pancake batter, so that it spreads easily onto the baking sheet and you don't have to worry about spreading out the batter into a circle. If your batter is not thin enough once you've finished making it, stir in water 1/2 t at a time until it reaches the right consistency.
Molly recommends using the lid of a mason jar (with the insert taken out) to shape a circle on the parchment paper.
I recommend making just one cookie for the first batch so you can master folding them into the right shape before you tackle doing multiple at a time.
When you pour the batter onto the parchment paper, make sure it spreads paper thin, otherwise your cookies will be chewy and thick and really hard to eat, this is super important!
Also, the thinner the rim of the glass you use to bend the cookies over, the better. A thicker glass may cause the cookie to break when you bend it.

I've recently added my recipes to the hosting site, Yummly, go check out my publisher's page and search the site for other awesome recipes!

Yum

Mardi Gras Throws: King Cake Misfortune Cookies