Sesame Street Cupcakes

Today was the polar opposite of yesterday. Today, I had no problem sleeping in until 9:30 a.m., as it was completely gloomy and rainy outside. Still, I had a bunch of things on the agenda that needed to get done, so it wasn’t exactly a lazy day. It sure did feel nice to sleep in, though!

My sister-in-law, Melissa, asked me to make a birthday cake for Logan’s first birthday, as I did for Brendan’s first (and second) birthdays. She told me that the theme for the party was going to be Sesame Street, and left it up to me from there.

A few weeks back, when I did Google searches to look for inspiration for cakes, I came across some really cute character cupcakes. Since I knew I was going to be doing a huge cake for Poppy’s birthday just one week before, I figured cupcakes would be a nice change of pace. I was right–these seemed like very little work compared to the fire truck cake. The most tedious part was actually coloring all of the icing–so many colors! After that, they actually came together pretty quickly.

Although I found pictures of a TON of different characters in cupcake form, I decided to stick with four of them–Elmo, Cookie Monster, Big Bird, and Oscar the Grouch. Also, to make sure all things are “fair” among brothers, I had to make Logan a smash cake like I did for Brendan. I decided to keep it pretty simple and pipe the Sesame Street sign on top, to tie everything together with the cupcakes.

A closer look at the cupcakes:

All of the characters’ eyes are made with mini marshmallows that I cut in half with kitchen scissors. I piped the little pupils on with black buttercream. The mouths for Elmo, Cookie Monster and Oscar are all made out of half an Oreo cookie. I piped Elmo’s fur with a star tip, and his nose is an orange miniature gumball. Cookie Monster’s fur is piped with tip #233, used for hair, fur, grass, etc.

Big Bird’s feathers are done with a leaf tip. I made the pieces for his beak using yellow candy melts. I drew the shape on a piece of paper, then traced it using the melted candy. I let them dry, then used two of them for each Big Bird (one for the top part of the beak, one for the bottom). I piped on Big Bird’s eyelids using a light blue buttercream. Like Cookie Monster, Oscar’s fur is also done with the #233 tip. One of the things that makes Oscar look like Oscar is the eyebrows, so I drew those on using brown buttercream.

And a closer look at the cake.

These were fun to make. I loved Sesame Street as a kid!