I Tried Making Monte Carlo Biscuits At Home And It Aged Me By At Least Five Years

File this under things I should have never attempted.

Like fairy bread and meat pies, Arnott's biscuits are a staple in every Australian household.

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And since they've started releasing some of their ~secret recipes~, I decided to make a homemade version of one of my favourites — the humble Monte Carlo. Because how hard can it be, right?

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Narrator: It was much harder than she expected.

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Before we begin, let me preface this by saying I'm a complete novice at baking who usually sticks to cakes, brownies and banana bread. I'm a lot more skilled in savoury dishes, but looking at the ingredient list — which contained staples like plain flour and butter — I felt pretty confident.

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The only "out of the ordinary" ingredient there was desiccated coconut, but I'm guessing a fair few Aussies have that lurking in their cupboard somewhere. I also swapped out the golden syrup because I didn't have this at home and it felt like a waste to buy a huge bottle for the tiny amount needed for the recipe. Instead, I substituted with some organic honey.

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The first step was easy enough. All I had to do was whisk butter, sugar, lemon rind, vanilla essence and honey. Then once that was done, it was time to add an egg and whisk it all together.

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I'm going to skip over the complete struggle I had to go through to get the lemon rind. Your girl does not own a microplane — aka a fancy zester — so I had to make do with my girthy grater. It got the job done, but I'm entirely convinced that I need to buy a microplane now.

Also pls don't judge my old hand beater. It's still going strong after many years of use, so my family hasn't replaced it.

After that, I stirred in the coconut and flour, which resulted in a thicccccc — yet slightly sticky — dough forming.

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Next, the recipe said to halve the mixture, place it on some baking paper and wrap it like a log. Sounds simple enough — but I struggled BIG TIME.

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Looking back, I think this is where things started to go wrong. The recipe didn't give any specifications about how long or thick the log should be, so I was kind of guessing in the dark here. The baking paper also made it hard to get a "rounded" and "firm" shape — I think cling wrap would have been a much better alternative.

Also mind you, I evened out my logs a lot better than what I'm showing in the picture on the left. I just didn't take better photos because I was STRESSED.

Moving on, I placed my "logs" in the fridge for 15 minutes so they could firm up. Once that was done, it was time to slice them up into 8mm pieces and pop them in the oven.

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So, let's talk about these, uh, interesting shapes. After I had taken my logs out of the fridge, they felt firm and looked in good nick. I removed the baking paper and used a serrated knife — as the recipe suggested — to start cutting up them up. But I guess because the shape of my log wasn't round enough, I ended up with these weird semi-circles instead. They were also very, very small — bite-sized maybe? And I have no explanation for how or why that happened.

Although my dreams of an aesthetically pleasing Instagram photo were starting to slip away, I soldiered on in the hopes that my cookies would magically look a thousand times better once they were baked.

Oh, and if you're wondering what the flat, pancake things are — that was my attempt at trying to roll out of the dough and cut them out into circles using a glass. The dough was a bit too sticky for this to work properly, so I just got these very sad, definitely not circular shapes instead.

Now, the recipe said to leave them in for 15 minutes or until golden brown. I checked on the biscuits after 10 and they had CRISPED THE FUCK UP. Panicking, I decided to flip them because the top side was still very pale and I didn't want the bottom to burn.

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If I had flipped the camera on my phone, you would have seen me, looking slightly unhinged, defeated and confused as to how something that sounded like a great idea could have gone so wrong.

After an anxious two minutes, I went with my gut and decided to take them out of the oven. They....well, they did not look good. The cookies were definitely overcooked (but somehow still pale-ish on the other side?!) and had minimal resemblance to a Monte Carlo.

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Was my oven too powerful???? Why did they cook like this????

Flipping them was probably a bad idea, huh.

But as an Aries, I was committed to finishing what I had started. So, I prepped the jam, made the cream (icing sugar, a dash of milk and butter) and iced these Frankenstein-esque creations once they had cooled down.

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While they don't look the prettiest, the jam/cream combo definitely made these biscuits look less like homemade chicken nuggets and more like Monte Carlos. All that was left to do was taste them!

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So, the side-by-side comparisons really don't do my homemade Monte Carlos any favours. Quite frankly, I would categorise them as the Poot Lovato of biccies.

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But tastewise, they actually weren't that bad. The jam and cream were delicious together and the biscuit itself had a really nice, coconutty flavour.

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My mum even gave it an 8/10, although she could have been trying not to hurt my feelings.

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Monte Carlos turned out to be A LOT harder to make at home than I originally thought.

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I do want to make it clear that I genuinely tried to ace this recipe because I love baking — even if I'm not the best at it. But just like in an episode of Bon Appétit's Gourmet Makes, sometimes things don't go to plan — and that's totally okay.

I know where I went wrong and what to correct if I want to attempt these a second time. Although for the benefit of my mental health, I don't think that will be anytime soon.

But, I'm happy that I gave it a red-hot go, even if to give myself — and anyone else reading this — a laugh at how disastrous they turned out.

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Seriously though, should I test out the other Arnott's recipes they've released, like the Iced Vovos or Scotch Fingers?

Oh, and if you want to give these a try yourself, here's the recipe for homemade Monte Carlos.