Like many toddlers, Gemma is OBSESSED with all things Sesame Street, especially Elmo and Cookie Monster. So, a Sesame Street themed birthday party seemed fitting. I decided to tone things down from Gemma’s first birthday party (a Hawaiian Luau theme which basically took over our Christmas holidays that year!) and keep it simple.
The central component to her birthday were the cupcakes (of course! I LOVE to bake so naturally that’s where my focus was).
I went with these cookie monster cupcakes:
Cute hey!? The best part is, they were very simple.
What you need in addition to the obvious cake mix and liners:
blue gel paste food colouring
- white Merckens wafers
- black decorator’s icing tube
- piping bag with a medium sized star tip
- chocolate chip cookie dough or a box of cookies
Here’s the step by step to making these:
Step 1: Use your favourite recipe/boxed cake mix for the cupcakes (I must admit, I often use boxed mixes...they are pretty good!). Line your tins with greaseproof liners (I always order mine from etsy) so that the colour of the liner stays vibrant.
Step 2: Make your buttercream icing and colour it blue using gel paste food colouring. This is key! The type of food colouring from the grocery store will not give you the vibrant colour you need. I used the Duff brand (found at Michael’s) in electric blue, and toned the colour down a smidge using a TEENY TINY amount of black.
Step 3: When your cupcakes are thoroughly cooled (do not try to ice warm cupcakes or the icing will melt), use a star tip to pipe on Cookie’s fur. You basically plop one star on and another right beside it, going around the whole cupcake. Along the top half of the cupcake I added some more stars to give his face a more three-dimensional look. Be sure your icing is very cool (and not warming up inside the bag from the heat from your hands) so that the icing is firm. We want Cookie’s fur to look furry!
Step 4: Lay out enough white chocolate wafers (you can buy these at Bulk Barn) to make the number of eyes you need. Pipe on small circles using black icing (just buy a small tube from Bulk Barn). Pay attention to where you pipe the pupil so that Cookie will have the ‘googly’ eye effect. When the black icing is dry enough to transfer, place the eyes on the top of the cupcake.
Step 5: For the mouth, bake small cookies using Pillsbury dough. I made sure the cookies were small enough to fit Cookie’s mouth and I made sure they were very chocolate-chipy, sometimes adding extra chips to the dough. I cut ⅓ of the cookie off and placed the remaining ⅔ rds of it in Cookie’s mouth. This was a little tricky, so I ended up piping some icing on the hidden portion of the cookie to keep it in place. You could also buy packaged cookies to save time!
Step 6: Refrigerate or freeze immediately so that cookie stays in place! If you freeze your cupcakes, be sure to take them out of the freezer two hours before serving.
Some other ideas for her birthday were:
- Use the leftover cookie dough to make a giant cookie! I piped ‘Happy Birthday Gemma' since I couldn’t really do that on her cupcakes and it doubled as another centrepiece.
- Use Sesame Street wrapping paper to wrap presents. If the presents are large enough, they actually serve as decor for the party!
- Use your local party store supplies. It’s tempting to go all pinteresty for your kid’s birthday, but let’s be honest, most people don’t have the time to re-create everything they see on pinterest, and the focus should be on your kid anyways. I got balloons, napkins, plates and table confetti for around $30 at the party store, and Gemma just loved seeing all her favourite characters’ faces on everything.
To cupcakes and cookies, and making a little two year old’s day,
♥ Dion
♥ Dion
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