We all grew up watching Big Bird, Elmo and Ernie on Sesame Street as kids. My favorite character was the cookie monster – with his bright blue muppet fuzz, wonky eyes and love for chocolate chip cookies – how could I resist? We both LOVE cookies! I decided to make a few cake pops in the theme of the cookie monster NOM NOM NOM. I’ve always found cake pops to be far more difficult to make than cakes, cupcakes or just candy because they require a lot of patience. I tried photographing as much of it as a I could – but had to work extremely fast because the candy melts dry ever-so quickly. I decided to take the pops off the stick and place them in shiny blue candy cups to compliment the candy color – but you could very well keep them on the sticks.
You want to begin by making a standard yellow cake, in this case I used a box mix just to make my life slightly easier – shhh don’t tell anyone! I would recommend using butter instead of oil when making cake pops because the oil in the cake tends to ooze out of the candy shell once the cake pops dry otherwise – so avoid oil, and feel free to use butter or applesauce instead. Once the cake is baked, crumble it and mix in three tablespoons of your favorite butter cream frosting. I used a cream cheese butter cream. Once you mix it up, you need to incorporate the cake and frosting to make a very dense pastry dough type consistency. Make one inch balls out of the cake and refrigerate for at least an hour. Once the balls have chilled, cut out small mouth shapes in the center of each cake pop to make the cookie monster mouth, then return to the fridge for another hour or so.
Once the balls are chilled, you are ready to make the candy coating! I used Wilton candy melts in blue. The trick to getting the candy melts to the perfect consistency, is to add in one table spoon of shortening or oil to the candy melts before microwaving. Remember to microwave in 30 second intervals, and stir in-between to avoid the candy from seizing. The candy coating is in the perfect consistency when it falls back in a ribbon like fashion. I placed each cake ball on a lollipop stick and quickly dipped it into the candy coating mixture and shook off any excess. Before it dried (in a ridiculously speedy 10 second window) I attached a pair of candy eyes and sprinkled on some blue sanding sugar to resemble the fuzz. Last but not least, I placed a single cookie wafer (cookie crisp cereal was the perfect size) into his mouth – to make him go ga ga for cookies!
They looked adorable and tasted fantastic. I hope you guys will give these a go!
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