Cookie Monster Cookies

Cookie Monster is one of my favorite Sesame Street characters and always has been. I have a collection of Cookie Monster products that I started when I was younger that I love to this day. I used to have it on display but for now it is packed. When one of my friends decided to have a Sesame Street themed birthday party for her two year old I was all over it asking to help. The official theme was Elmo (because her daughter loves Elmo) but she was nice enough to let me make Cookie Monster cookies for the occasion. I did also help her make Elmo cupcakes though :)

These take a little bit of time but it's because the grass tip takes a while to pipe, and you're doing two dozen if you make the whole recipe. My goal in making these was a basic sugar cookie that was soft with a hint of flavor and wouldn't break when someone picked them up due to the icing. Of course the aesthetics were pretty much the most important part because if they weren't attractive nobody would want to eat them. I wish I would have had to time to more characters though because these were really fun to make.

I did use store bought frosting to make the process quicker. I know it doesn't take any time at all to make frosting but just let me have this one :). I bought chocolate frosting and used black gel to make it darker and I was really happy with the results. If you start with white frosting and try to turn it black you will use a lot of black food coloring.

I used gel colors to get all of my colors (all two of them :) ). My gel colors look like these even though this isn't where I bought them. I will probably buy them here when I need more because they aren't available where I purchased them before. I also have Wilton colors and those are fine also because they are gels. Gels will give you a more vibrant color than the liquid droppers without using as much coloring. They are more expensive but they last a lot longer.

I started the cookies by printing out a cookie monster face I liked in about the size I wanted it then trimming it so I could cut around it on a cookie. I cut the dough with a round cookie cutter about the size of my cookie template then I laid the template on the dough and trimmed around it while leaving the bottom round.

When I started decorating, I started with the eyes and piped little mounds of frosting then used a slightly set finger tip to smooth out the point that was created when piping the mounds.

Using the black frosting I piped on the pupils and used a slightly wet finger tip to smooth those also. I piped the outline of where I wanted the mouth on all of the cookies then added water a 1/2 teaspoon at a time to the remaining black frosting until it was not quite a pourable consistency and still able to be piped with a pastry bag. I filled in the mouth with the smoother black frosting and it settled to a pretty smooth finish on its own.

I used the grass tip like this for making Cookie Monster's hair and I think it worked beautifully. I am really happy with the 3D way that these cookies came out.

Please ask if you have any questions. Happy Baking!

Basic Sugar Cookies
Makes about 2 dozen 3” cookies

Ingredients:
- 1 cup butter
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon almond extract
- 1 whole egg
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 3 cups flour

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. In the bowl of your mixer cream butter and sugar until smooth.
3. Beat in extracts and the egg.
4. In a separate bowl combine baking powder with flour and add a little at a time to the wet ingredients. The dough will be very stiff. It may be necessary to finish working the dough into a ball on a wooden board using your hands.
5. Do not chill the dough. Divide into workable batches, roll out onto a floured surface and cut. You want these cookies to be on the thicker side (I cut mine just about just under ¼” thick).
6. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until very lightly browned. You don’t want your cookies to be fully golden brown when you take them out or they won’t be soft anymore. Let cool on the cookie sheet until firm enough to transfer to a cooling rack. The cookies will be fragile when they first are taken out of the oven and they need to be given a few minutes to “set up” before being moved to a cooling rack.

Printable recipe

Recipe adapted from In Katrina's Kitchen

This recipe may be linked up to:

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· Crazy For Crust - Crazy Sweet Tuesday’s
· Alli 'n Sons - Sweet Tooth Friday

· Mrs. Fox's Sweets - Mrs. Fox's Sweet Party

· Sweet as Sugar Cookies - Sweets for a Saturday
· Mandy's Recipe Box - Totally Tasty Tuesday's

· A Pinch of Joy - Busy Monday Link Party

· House of Hepworth's - Hookin up with HoH

· Cups by Kim - Sweet & Simple Sunday

· Couponing & Cooking - Mealtime Monday

· What's Cooking, Love? - Showcase Your Talent Thursday