A few days ago my one and only celebrated his latest trip around the sun! What better way to honor a grown man’s birthday than with some cupcakes- Cookie Monster cupcakes.

Here’s how it went down. I have been feeling like crapola (one of my late grandmother’s favorite words) all week- sinus pressure, coughing, sneezing, itchy, watery eyes- I sound like an Claritin commercial… Anyway, I wasn’t in the “made for scratch mode” but I wanted to do something special for my wonderful husband.  I announced that I would deliver his birthday treat to his work, so obviously it was a dare to be great, go big or go home scenario. I asked him, and after perusing Pinterest cupcake ideas we settled on some chocolate cake with blue icing and Cookie Monster flair. These cupcakes fall into the “why not?” category for sure.

A trip to Walmart later I set my supplies out and started the project.

What I used-

Boxed Devil’s Food Cake

Chip Ahoy Chocolate Chip Cookies

A Tub of Blue Icing(minus the funfetti sprinkles) Yup, premade blue icing is a thing now.

An Icing Bag

Decorative Icing Tip

Candy Eyeballs

Plus, I used eggs, butter, flour and water for the cake mix

I set Gloria up in her high chair with some yogurt drops, preheated the oven and followed the back of the box instructions- mostly. I read somewhere that substituting butter for the oil would be a life changing boxed cake hack, so I implemented said change and followed the high altitude alterations (this adds some flour to the mixture and increases the water by a smidgen). 

Once the little cakes were baked through, removed from the oven and allowed to completely cool, I prepared to decorate. I had some Betty Crocker icing tips on hand, and had purchased an icing bag (is that the scientific name?) They didn’t exactly fit together so I sorta jammed the tip into the bag and made it work. My sister in law, Lea, is a real deal baker and I know she would have all the necessary tools and vision to make these better than I can even imagine! Alas, she’s in another state and couldn’t save me from myself this time. I loaded the bag and began to ice the “fur.” It was messy, but was looking good in that wild and crazy way. I powered through all 24 cupcakes and used the entire tub of blue icing.

For the next step I broke some chocolate chip cookies in half and pushed them into the iced cupcake to make a “mouth” which clearly would be stuffed full of a cookie.

Lastly I gave the little cupcakes eyes- and here’s where things got a little off track. See, I used these candy eyes and while they look great on the little pictures provided on the package, they made my Cookie Monsters look a little… terrified. I didn’t have any other eye candy or supplies to make new eyes, so I committed to my beady eyed Cookie Monsters. Looking at them now, I almost see more of an Oscar The Grouch expression?

Anyway, the girls and I delivered half of the cupcakes to work, where they were well received, and saved the other half for our small little dinner party at home. Everyone seemed to get a kick out of the whole cookie monster cupcake thing, and we even put on “C is For Cookie” so the kids could dance off some of their sugar rush.

Nobody seemed to fixate on the eyeball proportion other than yours truly though my efforts weren’t exactly Pinterest perfect, I mean… LOOK at them. In fact, now that I am really looking at these photographs I can’t stop staring at the desperate “don’t eat me!” faces! At least I still had a great time giving it a whirl.

Here’s to being a kid at heart for ever and ever. And here’s to celebrating my hard core, super manly, amazing, wonderful husband on his birthday. Cheers!