COOKIE MONSTER CAKE

Cookie Monster would absolutely FLIP over this cake! Blue velvet cake layers filled with cookies and cream chocolate chips, layers of chocolate frosting mixed with crushed Chips Ahoy and Oreos, covered in a vanilla frosting, blue sprinkles, MORE cookies and a layer of chocolate ganache.

Let�s talk Cookie Monster. My nephew loves Sesame Street, so when I saw the blue velvet cake mix, I knew I had to make a colossal blue cake loaded with cookies and frosting. There are a lot of steps in the recipe, but none of them are difficult, and it�s a really fun cake to make!

You start by using a basic doctored cake mix recipe using Duncan Hines blue velvet cake. It uses all of the ingredients on the box plus a box of vanilla pudding mix. To give it extra cookie flavor, you stir in a cup of cookies and cream baking chips. I divided the batter between 3- 8? round cake pans and baked it according to the directions for an 8? pan. Keep an eye on it to make sure it isn�t getting too dark. When preparing the pans, you can either spray them with Baker�s Joy (which is what I do) or you can spray them with cooking spray and then line the bottom with parchment. When they are done baking and cooling, I wrap them in plastic wrap and transfer them to the refrigerator. Chilled cakes are much easier to frost and you won�t get crumbs in your frosting.

The next step is to make the frosting. I love this frosting it tastes like fudge! To prepare, grind the cookies first in a food processor. I used 5-6 of each in the frosting and the same amount in the topping, so you can do them all together. In a mixing bowl, cream the butter until smooth. Add half of the powdered sugar and then the water, cocoa powder, and vanilla. After adding the second half of the powdered sugar check to see how thick your frosting is. It shouldn�t be too heavy because that will make it harder to spread and it will thicken when we add the cookies. You can always add more water to thin it out. Once it�s at the right thickness stir in the cookies. This is my favorite part- the chocolate cookie crunch is to die for. I could eat it with a spoon.

From here we will layer the cakes with the frosting. I used alllll of the frosting, but feel free to only use half and save the rest in the fridge for something else. Again, I transferred the cake to the fridge to keep it cool while making the other parts of the recipe.

The vanilla frosting is made pretty much like the chocolate minus the cocoa- butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, and water. This recipe is one and a half times of the standard frosting recipe since we will be using it to frost the whole cake. Set aside about a half a cup to pipe as a decoration. Frosting cakes is something that takes practice, but by all means it doesn�t have to be perfect. After working on this cake for 30 minutes I still had a lot of improvements I could make, but I didn�t want to go too over-the-top. I started by doing a very light crumb coat. Basically, we are lightly frosting the cake so create a �crumb barrier� before adding the next layer of frosting. After the coat, I put it into the fridge for about 15 minutes. When frosting the cake there are a few go-to tools that will help you- a cake turntable, frosting smoother, offset spatula, piping bags and tips, and a plastic squirt bottle. I have listed links to all of them below:

I start by frosting all around the outside of the cake and smoothing it with the icing smoother. The best way to set this up is placing your cake on a turn table so that you can move the cake instead of moving yourself. It takes a few turns to get it smooth and you can keep going until you feel like it�s smooth enough for you. After that, it�s time for sprinkles! For this cake, I used blue sprinkles from Fancy Sprinkles. They are crunchy and a really good quality. I put about 1/4 cup full in my hand and press them along the base of the cake. Keep going along the base of the cake and adding sprinkles until you get a layer at the bottom. Move the cake back to the fridge until you�re ready to add the ganache drip.

Now it�s time to make the ganache. It sounds super hard to make, but it�s really just microwaving chocolate chips and heavy cream! Add them both to a bowl and heat it up for a minute. Let it sit for an additional minute and then whisk to get it smooth. I let mine cool a bit and then pour about 1/3 of it into the plastic squirt bottle. You can also use a piping bag or even a baggie with a hole cut if you don�t have these available. I found that it�s best if the ganache is a little warm and hasn�t hardened up of course, and that your cake is cool. Pipe drips along the edge of the cake and continue until you�ve done the full circle. Using a spatula pour the rest of the ganache in the center. Pour the remaining cookie crumbs (that you didn�t use in the frosting) over the ganache. Put the rest of the vanilla frosting in a piping bag and do 8 dollops on the top of the cake. Add a few more sprinkles and garnish the dollops with mini Chips Ahoy and Oreos. I got the grab and go containers and used the rest along the base of the cake.

There are a few steps in this recipe, but they are totally worth it. This cake is super sweet and crunchy and Cookie Monster would be proud ??

Cookie Monster Cake

Ingredients

For the blue velvet cake:

1 box Duncan Hines blue velvet cake mix, plus ingredients listed on the box

1 box instant vanilla pudding mix

1 cup Hershey's cookies and cream baking pieces

For the chocolate frosting:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter

4 cups powdered sugar

1/2 cup cocoa powder

3-4 tbsp water