Cake Time With Cookie Monster

Check out this Cookie Monster cake from our Blog!

About a month ago Tim made me the most beautiful cake turntable! Couple that with the fact that I have been dying to get better at cake decorating, and I had the perfect reason to make a cake! I was trying to decide how ambitious I should be when I stumbled across the cutest Cookie Monster cake design on Delish.com, and figured it would be a good place to start.

I decided, however, to make a few modifications to the recipe in order to spruce it up. First, I filled the cake with cookies and cream buttercream instead of just plain blue and second, I put crushed cookies around the outside instead of whole (Cookie Monster was a pretty messy eater, so I found it fitting).

Though it looked easy enough, this cake proved challenging on more than one occasion. Not only did I break one of the cakes trying to remove it from the pan (foiling my plans to make a four-layer cake), I also could NOT figure out why my buttercream needed so much blue food coloring in order to achieve that signature Cookie Monster blue!

In the end I was proud of both the taste and look of my cake, and my coworkers enjoyed it as well!

Cookie Monster Cake

Makes one 9-inch round cake

Chocolate Chip Cake:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup vegetable shortening
• 3 cups granulated sugar
• 5 large eggs, room temperature
• 1-1/2 cup cake flour
• 1-1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 cup whole milk, room temperature
• 1/2 cup full-fat butter milk, room temperature
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2 cups mini chocolate chips

Oreo Buttercream:

• 1-1/2 cups unsalted butter, softened
• 3-1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1-1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 6-7 Tbsp. heavy cream
• 12 Oreos, crushed

Blue Buttercream:

• Same ingredients as above, minus the Oreos.
• Blue food coloring

Chocolate Ganache:

• 4 oz. (about 3/4 cup) semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup heavy cream

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prep two 9-inch round cake pans* with nonstick cooking spray and flour, removing any excess flour.

Cream butter and shortening until light and fluffy. Add in sugar, then add in eggs one at a time until incorporated.

Sift flour, baking powder, and salt together in a separate bowl. Whisk together milks and vanilla in a measuring cup. Add flour mix to the butter mixture alternately with the milks, beginning and ending with dry ingredients.

Mix until well combined, scraping down sides of bowl as you go.

Lightly coat mini chocolate chips with flour and add them to the batter.

Evenly distribute cake batter between pans* and bake for 45 minutes.

Cool completely on wire rack before frosting.

For frosting, cream butter until light and fluffy. Add in powdered sugar one cup at a time alternately with one tablespoon of whipping cream until desired consistency and taste is reached.

For Oreo buttercream: fold in the Oreos to the buttercream; For the blue buttercream: add blue food coloring until desired color is reached.

Once cake is completely cooled, secure to board or cake carrier base and frost the top of the bottom layer with Oreo buttercream. Then place second layer on top.

Frost the entire cake with blue buttercream (optional: do a light coat of frosting as a crumb coat before frosting fully). Place in fridge while you make the ganache.

Make ganache by heating heavy cream in a microwave for about 1 minute and pouring over chocolate chips. Let it stand for 2 minutes and then whisk until in comes together.

Pour ganache on top of the cooled cake, allowing it to drip over the sides.

For the final touches, crush up chocolate chip cookies and press around the base of the cake. Make the eyes out of two halves of two Oreos, using a little extra ganache for the pupils. Set the eyes up right on top of the cake.

Comment below if you make this recipe and let us know about any suggestions on how we could make it better!