Fairy Tale Parties: Cookie Monster Birthday Party

For my son's first birthday, I wasn't sure what kind of party and theme to do. I wanted it to be a low key gathering with close family and friends, but if there's an opportunity to throw a party, I'm always ready! My son didn't have a favorite character per se, but he liked Cookie Monster and I found such cute cupcakes on line that I couldn't resist using that as his theme.

The cupcakes I made were a little piece of heaven. They were Vanilla cupcakes with a Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough filling, (the recipe can be found here.) I made mini chocolate chip cookies from scratch to go in Cookie Monster's mouth and made normal size cookies for another Cookie Monster display (and to eat of course). They were so delicious that my mouth is watering just writing about them. I used the Bird on a Cake blog for tips on how to decorate the cupcakes, although I ended up using marshmallows for the eyes, instead of white candy melts. I baked a chocolate cake for the birthday boy. I love the idea of children having their very own cake to eat/destroy for their first birthday. You don't get many opportunities to dig into cake with your bare hands and I wanted my son to enjoy that moment at least once!

I kept the decorations simple with balloons and a few Cookie Monster displays, including three blue poms that I bought and used paper to cut out eyes, mouths and cookies to add to make faces. The party was a lot of fun. I made a huge pasta dish, with salad and bread and then we all enjoyed cupcakes and cookies. The cupcakes were decorated for kids, but they were definitely made with adults in mind!