Josh's Monstrous Birthday Cupcakes

What are those ridiculous confections in the header? you may be asking. Those are cookie monster cupcakes--or, you might say, monstrous birthday cupcakes, which I made for Josh's 25th. (Josh is old.)

Components:

-1 batch Sexy Low-Fat Vanilla Cupcakes (from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World)

-1/2 batch Fluffy Buttercream Frosting (also from VCTOW)

-1 batch Dreena's Homestyle Chocolate Chip Cookies

-24 extra chocolate chips

I first baked the cupcakes; while those were cooling, I baked the cookies and then mixed up the frosting. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to try to mix the frosting in the food processor--this was the first and only time I attempted to do this. Fortunately, for these cupcakes, I didn't need particularly fluffy frosting, so it worked out all right--and I learned a valuable lesson.

Note about the cookies--Dreena's recipe usually makes 8 big cookies. I made 16 smallish ones, and they were still a little too big for the cupcakes. If I were to do this over, I would've shot for maybe 20 or so--I really felt like I was cramming these cookies into the poor Cookie Monsters' maws.

I separated out a big glob of frosting to set aside (for the eyeballs), and then mixed a few drops of blue food coloring into the rest and mixed until I achieved an appropriate color. Once the cupcakes had cooled, I used a big soup spoon to gouge out little mouths in each cupcake--that way, they were smiley!--and then shoved a cookie into each mouth, as I tried not to think about violent force-feeding.

Using a #21 star tip, I piped blue frosting onto the cupcakes using short little upwards motions and being very careful around the cookies. As I did these, I popped them into the fridge to allow the blue frosting to set. After furring all the cupcakes, I washed out my frosting gun and equipped it with the white frosting I'd set aside. Using a round tip, I piped little swirly eyeballs on the cupcakes and dropped a chocolate chip pupil into each, set in off directions because Cookie Monster appears to have a lazy eye problem.

Naturally, these were so adorable that they were a big hit! As for taste, they probably would have been richer if I'd gone with the butter-based golden vanilla cupcake, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I wanted to eat a cupcake, after all! (Full disclosure--I ate one without frosting. Nyah nyah.)

Nutritional info:

-Cupcake base: 139.5 calories, 3.7 g fat, 25.3 g carbs, .8 g fiber, 1.6 g protein.

-Frosting: 142.8 calories, 8.1 g fat, 17.7 carbs, 0 fiber, .1 g protein

-Cookie: 93.2 calories, 3.9 g fat, 14.2 carbs, .3 g fiber, .8 g protein

Total: 375.5 calories, 15.7 g fat, 57.2 carbs, 1.1 g fiber, 2.5 g protein.

And that, mes amis, is why I ate mine without the frosting.