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Oct 13, 2009 11:01 pm US/Central
Good Question: How Do They Make Fortune Cookies?
(WCCO)
You don't need a fortune cookie to foretell what's for dessert when you order Chinese take-out. Those crunchy cookies with the ancient wisdom inside are a staple at many Asian restaurants. There is a mystery surrounding the fortune cookie. How do they get the fortune in the cookies?
Keefer Court Foods in Minneapolis, which cranks out 200,000 fortune cookies a day, revealed the secret.
"There is the machine to make the fortune cookie. First we make the dough and put it in the dough container," said owner Sonny Kwan.
The dough is baked on a conveyor then the flat cookie comes out.
"It picks up the paper after they're baked," said Kwan.
The fortune is then placed in the flat cookie and the machine folds it inside. Before automation, Kwan's parents folded the piping hot cookies by hand.
Kwan and a copy writer write the 1000 fortunes with fortunes like, "Problems are opportunities for growth" and "The road to success is always under construction."
Most assume the cookie is a Chinese tradition. They were apparently created by a Chinese restaurant owner in San Francisco as a fun dessert for Americans who, unlike the Chinese, were accustomed to eating something sweet after a meal.
If your fortunes in the cookies don't come true, Kwan has this advice:
"If it's not true right now, it might be true later. So you always have hope for good fortune."
With hundreds of thousands of cookies made daily, fortunes are repeated. But chances of you getting the same one twice are slim.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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