iced vovos

forget all the easy recies I’ve been providing you with – these ones are a veritable operation. mixing, chilling, rolling, shaping, baking, icing and dusting and icing, these took me the better part of a morning and far more pink than I’ve ever handled.

so iced vovos – I didn’t know what these were until my mum showed me a photo of an australian magazine’s recipe of prettily iced cookies, and I’m not sure I completely get the point of them even now. a basic cookie topped with coconut-topped marshmallow icing and jam, these are an australian tea-time treat by the same company that makes the more popular chocolate tim-tam cookies. I’ve never had the commercial ones before so I have no basis on which to judge these cookies, but I don’t think I’ll make these again (recipe here).

here’s what didn’t work for me:

1. the biscuit was terribly uninspiring: not a butter cookie, and (wiki mentions it’s meant to be a wheat flour cookie) neither sandy nor crumbly nor crisp, these had no discerning characteristics at all. there was the barest smell of butter, very little browning to coax flavour out of them (and I baked them longer than instructed) – I don’t think you can call this a cookie for it’d barely stand on its own.
2. the icing as provided on the website i.e. melt butter and marshmallows did not work at all. I bought american marshmallows – more expensive and of better quality – and yet I could barely get them to melt on a low heat with the butter: the butter would melt and the marshmallows would slide on the surface. I then tried another batch in the microwave, which did nothing except stiffen into a useless and wasteful brown mass. i ended up getting a basic marshmallow recipe elsewhere which was a little better, but it was still highly finicky and the taste of it barely worth the trouble.

I dislike food waste, and it’s particularly bothersome when it uses such a great amount of ingredients that could have gone into more deserving things – which is also a reason as to why i don’t usually use recipes from magazines or books, and this one, unfortunately, hasn’t changed my opinion of these publications.

if you are interested in reinterpreting this cookie – it is admittedly gorgeous – here’s what I think you could do: use a crisp and buttery shortbread cookie as a base – they keep their shape better and taste remarkably superior – and top it with purple-hued (I think this makes a more pleasing contrast with the darker colour of jam) royal icing with toasted coconut. they have so much potential to be a great cookie – and if you ever try these, let me know!