See? {picture below} I can predict the future. I know. If you didn’t know better, you’d think I were Nostradamus. Tell me about it … No. Really. Go on. Tell me about it.

If you circle the web, looking for Fortune Cookie recipes, you’ll find tons of directions and comments and recipes and it can sound kind of scary: You have to work super speedy quick or they’ll be stiff before you get started shaping them. If the batter is too thick, they will just be like cake. If it is too thin, they’ll stick to the baking sheet liner. Use butter. Don’t use butter.

Here’s what I say: Blah blah blah bladdy blah. Blah.

I was really intimidated when I first decided to make these. I had been led to believe that, not only were they tricky under the best of circumstances, but I was making my own gluten-free recipe. Oh, the humanity! Horror!

Oh, bother.

I swear, nothing sucks the fun right out of baking more than intimidation. And it’s really starting to get on my nerves, all this discouragement. So I’m here to tell you, rest assured. These are easy peasy. Most things, if you do them right, are easy peasy. Trying to force a square peg into a round hole, that’s not easy. Hell, it’s not even possible. But baking with a good all-purpose gluten-free flour makes all things gluten-free possible.

So I predict … that you will be successful making these fortune cookies unless you use a bean flour blend. Bean flour blend people, we have to talk.

There are those of you, and you know who you are, who use bean flour blends successfully. You are aware that these blends are not genuine “all-purpose gluten-free flours” {even if you’re not quite willing to admit it}, and you have your work-arounds. You should live and be well, baking your way from Fortune Cookies to Tiramisu.

The rest of us — step away from the bean flour.

I understand that there is at least one readily available, well-priced brand of bean flour. I know that it’s significantly more nutritious than rice-based flours.

I don’t care.

It smells bad, and {and this bit is important, so please put on your listening ears} … BEAN FLOURS DO NOT BEHAVE THE SAME. They are stickier and simply not as durable as rice-based flour blends. You will not be successful in these recipes. Many of you send me emails, asking why this or that recipe didn’t work for you. You’re understandably frustrated. 99% of the time, you’re using a bean flour blend. You don’t tell me that straight away, because you don’t know that it’s a problem. But it’s a problem. A biggie.

Look, I used to use a bean flour, too. I started out with Bette Hagman’s “Four Flour Bean Mix.” BUT THAT WAS OVER SIX YEARS AGO! There was nothing else out there. I had no choices. I thought I had died and gone to heaven when I found a bean flour blend in my local, mainstream supermarket. Eureka! But today, there are upwards of 15 companies that make all-purpose gluten-free flour blends. You don’t have to use Better Batter like I do. This is not a cult of personality. I’m not the GF Flour Police. It’s a Free Country! Use Jules, use Gluten-free Pantry, use Tom Sawyer {good if you have a potato allergy, since it is the only one I know of that is sans potato of any sort}. You get the idea.

With that in mind, let’s make some Fortune Cookies. They’re tender yet crispy, and I could eat, like, a million of them at once because they’re so deliciously subtle. And you could totally make some for your spouse and add some naughty fortunes to them and stuff. Just be sure not to give the naughty ones to your kids. ‘Cause you’d scar them for life. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

What sort of all-purpose gluten-free flour do you use? Do you make your own? Do you use a commercial blend? How did you decide on it, and do you ever think of changing? I’ll go first — I learned about Better Batter from you all — readers on this site! Thank you kindly. Now you — what’s your blend, honey?

Love you. Mean it.
xoxo Nicole