How to Create a Good Fortune, Asian Inspired, New Year’s Party

This shop for Tai Pei Egg Rolls and Tai Pei Spring Rolls has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone, but feel free to enjoy the recipes and craft included in this post. #TaiPeiGoodFortune #CollectiveBias

New Year’s is always a fun time for us. Not only is it like an arbitrary slate that I get to wipe clean for new beginnings, it also falls right around my birthday, January 2nd.

Having a birthday party on January 2nd isn’t always easy. Try talking people into coming out to an Asian restaurant (my favorite style) on my birthday. It always seems to be like pulling teeth. I feel bad because I can’t get friends to my birthday and they feel bad because they want to come but that energy from the holidays is drained. I don’t blame them, instead, we problem solve.

What we’ve decided to do instead is do our partying on New Year’s Eve with the rest of our friends and then we do something smaller with family on my birthday. I’m okay with that. The point is to be surrounded by the one’s you love as much as possible, and I get to make that a three day holiday! New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day and my birthday. Who else gets a three day birthday party every year? I can’t complain about that!

This year we wanted to do something simple because there has been a lot of extra work and travel this past month or so and we’re ready for something small, simple, yet still fun and meaningful to do with our friends, so we decided on a Good Fortune New Year’s Party theme. I’m excited for this and we’re already doing some test runs.

Today I’ll show you how we’re setting up our Good Fortune party. It’s easy, so I know you’ll be able to pull this off with ease too!

First of all, the food. We’re not doing a full on feast, just some snacks and appetizers to get us through the evening. Tai Pei has Egg Rolls and Spring Rolls to make the food a snap to pull together.

They are easy to find at Walmart too, right in the middle of the frozen food aisle. This makes my job as host even better! I love serving great food that’s easy to prepare for my guests. It saves me a lot of time so I can add even more personal touches to the rest of the party without as much last minute stress.

To go with these delicious egg rolls (Did I ever mention my love of Chinese food to you? Egg rolls and spring rolls are on the top of my Chinese favorites list), I came up with four easy dipping sauces. One for everyone’s tastes, salty, sweet & sour, spicy, and a sweet spicy. These are some of my favorite dips for egg rolls and spring rolls.

However, if you want to use the dipping sauce that comes with the Tai Pei egg rolls and spring rolls to make your party even faster to whip up, then be my guest! It’s my go to sauce when I don’t want to take the time to make my own. Great for this quick dinners.

Because I love you, I’m going to share all four quick and easy recipes with you.

First up, the Soy Dipping Sauce.

Ingredients

• 3 tbsp soy sauce or liquid aminos
• 3 tbsp rice vinegar
• 1/8 tsp sesame oil
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp onion powder

Directions: Mix all ingredients in a bowl and serve.

Next up to bat is the Sweet & Sour Sauce.

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup vinegar
• 2/3 cup water
• 1/4 cup soy sauce or liquid aminos
• 1 tbsp ketchup
• 2 tbsp corn starch

Directions: Add all ingredients to a medium sized sauce pan and bring to a boil. Stir continuously until the sauce thickens. Remove from heat, let cool, then serve.

I love the shiny appearance the cornstarch gives on this one.

Third recipe for you is super easy. It’s the Spicy Mustard Sauce. I honestly didn’t realize just how spicy this stuff is. Yowza!

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup dry mustard
• 3 tbsp water
• 1/8 tsp white pepper

Directions: Combine all ingredients in a small bowl. Serve.

I told you that one was easy!

Finally, my favorite of the four recipes, Sweet Chili Sauce. I’ve always been a sucker for this dip.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup rice vinegar
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 clove of garlic, minced or pressed
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

Directions: Bring all ingredients to a boil in a small sauce pan, then reduce heat and simmer for five minutes. Remove from heat, let cool, then serve.

We cut up our Tai Pei egg rolls and spring rolls and stick a decorative toothpick in them. Makes them super easy to dip. I found that the Spicy Mustard dip and the Sweet Chili Sauce taste excellent together! You can mix them up and come up with your own combinations. It’s part of the fun of the party!

For this party, we decided to start out the evening with some hot tea. It goes great with the Good Fortune theme, and it’s a perfect way to warm us up on a chilly winter night. Not to mention, some excellent conversation always seems to surface when tea is involved.

One of the big players in our Good Fortune party is fortune cookies, however we didn’t want to actually purchase fortune cookies for this. Instead, we made our own out of paper. Don’t worry, we don’t plan on eating them, that would just be silly. What I love about these is they are quick to make and we can design our own fortunes to place inside. We can either make fortunes for specific people in mind, or we can come up with a bunch of great fortunes that suit our guests personalities. They are completely customizable from the paper colors we choose to the words we place inside. This makes them a great addition to just about any party theme you choose.

If you’ve never made a paper fortune cookie, don’t worry, I’m going to show you. They’re pretty easy once you get the hang of it.

Supplies

• Decorative paper, such as scrapbook or origami paper
• Something approximately 3 inches in circumference, a drinking glass, mason jar lid, etc
• Small strips of paper with fortunes written or printed on them
• scissors
• double sided tape

Here’s how it’s done.

First, trace a circle onto the back side of the decorative paper. I trace several at a time because we want to make a bunch. I used a ceramic lid from one of my husbands tea cups. I also like using mechanical pencils because they have such a fine tip.

Next cut out your circles.

With the decorative side of the paper out, fold the circle in half but do not crease it. Just touch the edges together. You can see in the picture how I kept the edge rounded.

This is the tricky part, but I promise it gets easier when you get the hang of it.

Place your middle finger on the top of the fold and your thumb at the bottom (look at the image for proper placement), the with your index finder find the middle of the fold and start to press inward while bringing your middle finger and thumb together.

An important note at this step: do not continue to hold onto the edge when you originally folded it in half. That open edge needs to be able to fold into each other on it’s own from the force of this fold demonstrated below, and if you’re pinching the open edges together it can’t do that and will ultimately crumple the paper. I speak from experience, trial and error.

As you continue to press your middle finger and thumb together you’ll ultimately make the familiar fortune cookie shape.

At this point you can open it up a bit and insert one of the fortune strips you created. I like to fold mine in half so people can’t read them before they open them.

After you insert your fortune, take a small bit of double sided tape and place it on the inside of the fold near the crease.

It’s kinda hard to see in that picture, but it’s there. After you have your tape on there, press it together. I like to stick my fingers inside the fortune cookie and press to make sure it sticks good.

Now, create several of these and place them in a bowl for your guests to have fun with as you wish them good fortune in the New Year. A fun twist would be to have everyone open one at midnight. That way they’re starting their year with good fortune.

Don’t forget to follow Tai Pei on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for even more great restaurant-inspired ideas.

How are you starting the New Year with good fortune? I shared my ideas, you can share yours with us in the comments.