Lucky Food for New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve often finds people looking forward to the future and perhaps wishing and hoping for a brighter or more profitable year than the one ending. A fun way to add some luck, or at least suggest the possibility of it, is by presenting homemade foods with lucky connotations. Even if you are not a superstitious person by nature, your gift of food will display your wishes for a happy and successful New Year. Here are a couple of easy recipes you can follow to make and give some lucky food for New Year's Eve.

Donuts

Donuts might not sound like a lucky food for New Year's Eve. When you consider that foods shaped like rings - representing the year coming full circle - are believed by many to bring good fortune for the New Year, you will see that donuts are ideal. They can be very simple to whip up, as well.

Ingredients
1 can refrigerated biscuits
Vegetable oil
Cinnamon sugar, powdered sugar, chocolate frosting, etc.

Heat about two inches of oil in a heavy pot or pan over medium-high heat. Use a small lid such as that from a ketchup or other type of condiment bottle to cut a hole out of the center of each refrigerated biscuit. Fry the donuts and their holes in the oil until golden, flipping as needed. Drain on paper towels and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar or powdered sugar or glaze with frosting.

Fortune Cookies

This lucky food for New Year's Eve is fun to make and to give. When you are the one making fortune cookies, you can be sure that all of paper slips present prosperous predictions. You might think these are tough treats to turn out, but if you can make pancakes and sugar cookies, you can make these.

Ingredients
1 egg white
1/8 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 pinch salt
1/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4 cup white sugar

Preheat oven to 400F. Mix the egg white and vanilla in a medium bowl until foamy. Sift the dry ingredients together and blend into the egg mixture. The dough will be slightly runny, similar to pancake batter. Place dough by the teaspoonful onto greased cookie sheets, keeping about four inches between each cookie. Use a spatula to spread the dough into circles.

Bake for five minutes until the edges are golden. Remove from oven and move each cookie to a flat surface immediately. Place a fortune, which you have prepared by hand or on your computer, into the center of each cookie. Fold the cookies in half and hang, folded side down, over a glass or measuring cup. Pull the edges down and toward the center. Set cookies in the cups of a muffin tin to cool so that they retain their shape.