Cookie Monster cake...not just for kids!

...as in, not a single child had a piece of this cake. My husband is getting ready to go on one of his yearly government mandated vacations, so we threw him a going away bash/early birthday extravaganza at a friend's house this past Saturday. It was pretty much the child's birthday party you always wanted to have, but with booze...meaning it was even better. We set up the slip-n-slide and bought a ridiculous amount of Capri Suns to beat the heat. I'm going to tell you, one- I was proud I could open a Capri Sun without stabbing straight through the thing with the straw or causing a large leaky mess, and two- those things are way more delicious than I remember. That being said, the pièce de résistance to this adult-child's birthday shindig was the cake my hubster requested:

C is for cookie, and coincidentally, codependency.

I had an absolute blast making this Cookie Monster cake. Who knows, maybe Kate: Baker of Cakes Who Hates Kids (a slogan I decided against using on business cards) may actually have a future in making children's birthday cakes; we call that irony. Or in another case, maybe you or someone you love dearly is also still a man child child at heart, or a pilot like Derek (same thing), or just really likes Sesame Street...I can totally hook you up. In all seriousness, my husband's youthfulness is a breath of fresh air to someone as crotchety as I am for my age. He keeps me from being a 27-year-old shut in who crotchets afghans for her dog and hedgehog while watching Matlock reruns. 

Tools of the trade, locked and loaded.

While it looks like Mr. Monster must have taken a really long time to texture, he didn't because I totally cut corners. You can cut corners in the caking world and still make a gorgeous or fun cake (Hey, I make the rules here)- especially thanks to the large fella on the left up there- my triple star tip. I covered the top of the cake first, starting in a large circle and working my way in. I took the smaller star tip on the right and covered in any blank/missed spaces, because tessellations are not something I have worked with since the 6th grade, so my repeating pattern game is totally off the mark.

Don't mind my absolutely awful crumb coating,
I was apparently hopped up on cookies when I did that...

So you can see how the pattern just repeats itself over and over and over until you've got a cake entirely covered in blue stars:

It's so fuzzy! But in a good, edible way.
Not the, "I'm pretty sure that's mold" kind of way.

At this point, if you're anything like me you'll also be covered entirely in blue stars, too. I cropped this picture because it looked like a Smurf massacre occurred on the counter, and their blue blood was literally all over my hands...and arms, and elbows, and again, not sure how, but my hair, too. Yet my apron was completely devoid of blue. I'm really talented, y'all. Apparently my husband isn't the only one with childlike qualities in this house. And in the words of the great Analrapist (pronounced "uh-NAHL-ruh-pist"), Tobias Funke, "I blue myself..." I must have said this at least three times throughout the caking process. I do, however, consider it a win any time I get to incorporate an Arrested Development reference into my daily life because there's always money in the banana stand.

He sees you when you're sleeping...wait, that's not right.

I had the most fun working on Mr. Monster's eyeballs. These are just made of marshmallows so large I can't even fit one in my mouth without detrimental effects to my jaw occurring. Seriously, these things are the size of my fists. I cut one in half and then flattened the pieces out with my Bailey's lowball glasses. Yeah, not exactly kid tested OR mother approved, but those glasses got the job done right. My rolling pin was too large to flatten these in a nice eyeballish shape, and instead looked more like a rhombus. I am killing it with these 6th grade math references today. I then took chocolate melts, globbed a bit of frosting on the back, and pressed them on to the marshmallows. Finally, I chopped cookies in half and just shoved them into the icing where the mouth should be. But since Cookie Monster isn't exactly the daintiest of eaters from what I remember, I crushed up a cookie and sprinkled the crumbs around his mouth and chin, and finished up with a cookie border around his head cause he's always got cookie on the brain:

The addiction is real.

The cake was a funfetti cake (sticking with a theme here), and was almost completely gone by the night's end. We had just enough leftovers to enjoy two more slices, and we'll arm wrestle for the last tiny piece later, or act like adults and share it. I highly enjoyed seeing a bunch of adults running around with their mouths dyed blue from the frosting while jamming on some Capri Suns. My hubster sure knows how to have a party, alright. Til next time, my fellow eaters!