100 Fortune Cookie Sayings, Plus the Real History and Recipe

Below: 100 fortunes you can copy straight onto paper slips, the recipe that actually produces a foldable cookie, and the origin story — which is not the one most people assume.

If you only came for the sayings, they start further down. If you are writing your own, skip to the rules at the end; there are only four and one of them is a measurement.

Where fortune cookies actually came from

Fortune cookies are not Chinese. The strongest evidence points to Japan: tsujiura senbei, a folded cracker with a paper fortune inside, was sold outside temples near Kyoto in the 19th century — darker, larger, made with sesame and miso rather than butter and vanilla.

They reached America with Japanese immigrants, were made and sold in California by both Japanese and Chinese bakeries, and became fixed in Chinese-American restaurants after the Second World War, when Japanese-American internment emptied the bakeries that had been making them. They are, in other words, an American invention with Japanese ancestry that the world files under Chinese food — which is why they are almost unknown in China itself, and why they belong on a table celebrating Asian and Pacific Islander heritage as an American story rather than an imported one.

How to make fortune cookies at home

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 2 large egg whites
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp almond extract
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup cornstarch
• Pinch of salt
• Your pre-written fortunes, already cut

Steps

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C) and line a baking tray with parchment paper.
2. Melt the butter, then stir in the sugar until it dissolves completely.
3. Beat in the egg whites, then the vanilla and almond extracts.
4. Combine the flour, cornstarch and salt separately, then add the dry mix to the wet, stirring to a smooth batter.
5. Spread a tablespoon of batter into a thin circle about 3 inches across. Two or three per tray, no more — see the note below.
6. Bake 8–10 minutes, until the edges just start to brown.
7. Take them out, lay a fortune across the centre, fold in half, then bend the folded edge over the rim of a cup.
8. Rest each one in a muffin cup to hold its shape while it cools hard.

The step that decides whether this works

A fortune cookie is foldable for about ten seconds after it leaves the oven. After that it sets and shatters when you bend it. That single fact governs the whole recipe:

• Bake two or three at a time, never a full tray. The last cookie on a tray of eight will have set long before you reach it.
• Cut every fortune before the first tray goes in. You will not have ten seconds spare to cut paper.
• If one sets before you fold it, put it back in the oven for a few seconds and it will soften enough to bend.
• Wear a thin cotton glove. The cookies are too hot to fold comfortably and the ten seconds are spent hesitating otherwise.

Folding is the fiddly part, and it is the part a live class walks you through in real time rather than in writing — Rockoly runs baking and dessert workshops in that live format, and cookies turn up on the dessert round of a virtual cooking class too.

100 fortune cookie sayings

Copy any of these. They are grouped by the mood of the room.

Funny classics (1–25)

1. Help! I’m being held prisoner in a fortune cookie factory.
2. You will receive a fortune cookie.
3. Never forget a friend. Especially if he owes you.
4. You will soon have an out-of-money experience.
5. You will live long enough to open many fortune cookies.
6. He who laughs last is laughing at you.
7. You have rice in your teeth.
8. That wasn’t chicken.
9. The road to riches is paved with homework. Sorry.
10. A closed mouth gathers no feet.
11. You will find the thing you are looking for in the last place you look.
12. Someone is looking at you through nine computer screens.
13. Your lucky number is not the one on the back of this slip.
14. Today is a good day to stay in bed. Sorry, this is late.
15. You are not illiterate.
16. Your shoes will make you happy today.
17. The fortune you seek is in another cookie.
18. You will be hungry again in one hour.
19. An alien of some sort will be appearing to you shortly.
20. Do not mistake temptation for opportunity. Actually, do.
21. Everyone at this table thinks you should text them back.
22. You have been chosen. Details to follow.
23. A conclusion is simply the place where you got tired of thinking.
24. Your future contains at least one more bad haircut.
25. This cookie is stale and so is that argument.

Savage ones (26–45)

26. You are not the main character, and it’s going fine.
27. Someone has been telling that story better than you.
28. Your leftovers are older than your last good idea.
29. The problem is not the printer.
30. They noticed. They just said nothing.
31. You are one unread email away from a difficult week.
32. Your group chat is discussing you fondly. Mostly fondly.
33. You will win the argument three days late, in the shower.
34. There is nothing wrong with your plan that a plan wouldn’t fix.
35. Confidence is lovely. Preparation is better.
36. The thing you are avoiding takes eleven minutes.
37. Not every silence is agreement.
38. Your password is the name of a pet you no longer have.
39. Someone thinks you are the difficult one.
40. You are two open tabs away from a decision.
41. That was the last of the good coffee.
42. Your bravest act today will be replying honestly.
43. The person you envy also cannot sleep.
44. Your best trait is also the one on your last performance review.
45. This is not a sign. You just want it to be.

Absurd ones (46–60)

46. A duck knows.
47. You will be moderately pursued by a goose.
48. Beware of tall furniture.
49. The moon is closer than it appears.
50. Your ancestors also disliked Mondays.
51. Somewhere, a printer is warming up for you.
52. Three of your socks are living another life.
53. The soup remembers.
54. You will one day own a hat you cannot explain.
55. There is a spoon in this restaurant that is yours by right.
56. Statistically, you are already someone’s favourite person.
57. A pigeon has opinions about your route home.
58. Your name will be spelled correctly on the fourteenth attempt.
59. There is bread in your future. So much bread.
60. In another universe, this cookie is opening you.

Ones with actual wisdom (61–75)

61. Do the hard part first; the rest is downhill.
62. You can be tired and still be on the right path.
63. Say the true thing kindly, and say it early.
64. Almost every problem is smaller once it is written down.
65. Ask for the thing you actually want, not the thing you think you can get.
66. The habit beats the burst of effort. It always has.
67. People remember how quickly you replied when it mattered.
68. Rest is not a reward for finishing; it is part of the work.
69. You are allowed to change your mind in public.
70. Curiosity ages far better than certainty.
71. If it takes two minutes, do it now.
72. The generous read of someone’s motives is usually the accurate one.
73. Do not confuse being busy with being useful.
74. Learn the names. It costs nothing and changes everything.
75. Start before you are ready; you will not become ready first.

For a work event or team dinner (76–90)

76. A meeting will be cancelled. Enjoy it fully.
77. You will be praised for something you did in March.
78. Your best idea this quarter arrives in a corridor.
79. Someone new will make your job easier. Be kind to them.
80. The deck does not need another slide.
81. Great things are coming, but not this sprint.
82. You will finally read that document. It was fine.
83. A colleague is about to become a friend.
84. Delegate the thing you are secretly enjoying.
85. Your calendar is lying to you about next week.
86. You are better at this than you were a year ago.
87. The quiet person in the meeting is right.
88. Take the lunch break. All of it.
89. Something you built is still being used.
90. Ask the question everyone is thinking.

For a party, wedding or celebration (91–100)

91. The best table is the loud one. You are at it.
92. Someone here will be in your life for thirty more years.
93. Dance badly. It is the correct amount of dancing.
94. You will tell this story wrong and better every year.
95. Go and talk to the person standing alone.
96. Take the group photo before everyone gets tired.
97. Say the toast you are too nervous to say.
98. Tonight is one of the good ones. Notice it now.
99. Eat the second dessert.
100. Whatever happens next, this part was worth it.

Writing your own: four rules

1. Twelve words maximum. A standard fortune slip is about 2 inches by half an inch. Twelve words is the practical ceiling at a readable font size, and the good ones are shorter.
2. One idea, no set-up. A fortune is a punchline without the joke in front of it. Anything that needs a first sentence belongs on a card instead.
3. Address one person. “You” works; “everyone” does not. The whole effect is that the cookie chose you.
4. Cut and fold the slips before you bake. Repeated because it is the mistake everyone makes: you get ten seconds per cookie, and you will spend them looking for scissors.

For a crowd, print a sheet, cut it into strips with a paper trimmer rather than scissors, and stack them face-down beside the oven in the order you want them to come out.

Before you crack the next one

The cookie is a delivery mechanism. The reason it survived a century of restaurants — and turns up on Lunar New Year tables and at office parties alike — is that it makes a room read something out loud to each other, which is a rare thing to get for free at the end of a meal.

If you are making a batch for a group, write half the fortunes about the people who will be there. That is the version nobody forgets, and it works just as well alongside other cookies worth baking for a crowd.