Preheat oven to 350 (175 celsius). You can use a box of cake mix or make your own recipe at home.

Cream together 1 cup of sugar and ½ cup unsalted butter. Add in two eggs, and mix in vanilla. In a separate bowl, combine 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour and 1 ¾ teaspoons baking powder. Add the wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix well. Add milk and stir until the cake batter is smooth.

Pour the batter into two greased cake pans. You could also line the bottom of your cake pan with parchment paper and grease the sides; I find this helps the cake to ‘release’ more easily. Bake for 20-30 minutes until the cake springs back when lightly touched. Cool your cake completely then wrap it in plastic wrap and freeze it. If you’d prefer not to work with frozen cake you can put it in the fridge for 10 minutes to make it nice and cold, but not frozen.

Make sure you trim the top of the cakes so they are flat and level. Trim the outer ring of the cakes so the size of each cake layer is the same (so it’s not lop-sided). An uneven cake is much harder to frost later.

I doubled my recipe for vanilla buttercream by using two cups of butter to make sure I wouldn’t run out. Make your vanilla buttercream frosting with 2 cups of butter and about 7 cups of icing sugar, 2 tsp of vanilla and 4 tsp of cream or milk. Blend it in a large bowl with a hand mixer or stand mixer until it’s fully mixed and no sugar crystals remain.

Add in blue food coloring and blend it again to make sure the color is well mixed. Scoop out 3-4 tablespoons of frosting into a separate bowl and add black food coloring.

Melt white candy chocolate melts (or white chocolate chips) using a microwave on low power or a double boiler on your stove. Lay out some parchment paper. Use forks to dip your oreo cookies and cover them in melted white chocolate then tap off any excess chocolate for a smoother finish.

While the white chocolate is still sticky, lay your covered oreos on parchment paper and add a black candy melt on top. Put the black candy melt near the edge of the cookie, not directly in the center to help make the ‘googly eyes’ of the Cookie Monster cake.

If your black candy melts look dusty, put a dot of vegetable oil on your fingers and rub it so it looks shiny.

Put an even layer of frosting between your cake layers. Then add a thin layer of blue buttercream frosting to the outside of your cake as a crumb coat. This will help lock in any crumbling bits of your cake edges from making your final product look messy. Once your crumb coat is on, cool your cake in the fridge for 10 minutes to make the next step easier.

Use piping tip #233, a grass tip, to give your Cookie Monster smash cake a shaggy look. Fill your piping bag ½ full with blue icing. If your bag is too full it can be hard to get the right amount of pressure to use this piping tip correctly.

Start at the bottom layer of your cake working your way around the whole thing to put layers of shaggy frosting on your Cookie Monster cake. Squeeze, gently press into the cake, continue squeezing, then pull away gently to create the fur. Stop squeezing and pull away from the cake. The longer you pull away from the cake, the longer the blue frosting fur will be. Take breaks if your hands get sore during this step. Work your way slowly up the side of the cake.

On the top of the cake, take your black frosting and use a butter knife to spread it into the shape of a big, happy Cookie Monster mouth. It doesn’t have to be perfect, the blue frosting fur will cover up the edges.

Outline the mouth with a layer of blue frosting fur and your grass piping tip. Pull the frosting towards the center of the mouth, not away from it. Work your way out from the mouth to the edges of the cake with more blue frosting fur.

Add your chocolate-covered oreo cookie eyes to the top of your Cookie Monster smash cake. They shouldn’t look in the same direction; Cookie Monster has fun, crazy eyes.

I was able to push a cookie into the black frosting ‘mouth’ of my Cookie Monster cake. You may want to use a small paring knife instead to create a slit for the cookie to rest in your cake’s mouth.

To cover the gap in the cake, I added more black frosting to make it look smooth again (like the cookie is disappearing into the Cookie Monster’s mouth). Then I added some crumbled chocolate chip cookies to make it look even better.