Cookies

Cookie Monster celebrates the best way he knows how. — Cookie Monster celebrates his birthday the best way he knows how.

During on "," Cookie Monster reveals his playhouse made almost entirely of cookies. — During an appearance on "The Leslie Mostly Show," Cookie Monster reveals his playhouse made almost entirely of cookies.

Cookie's recipe book displaying a variety of favorite cookies in the home video release . — Cookie's recipe book displaying a variety of favorite cookies in the home video release *Cookie Monster's Best Bites*.

A cookie is a sweet baked dessert made from flour and sugar, smaller in size than other pastry and typically prepared in batches. One of the more iconic and popular types of cookie is the chocolate chip.

As his name implies, Cookie Monster is defined by his passion for cookies, and it was the subject of his best known song, "C is for Cookie" and others. Cookie focus and puns are carried further in Cookie Monster's own recurring segments "Cookie's Crumby Pictures" (reworking movies with a cookie motif defining almost every character) and "Smart Cookies."

The sweet treat inevitably features in nearly every one of his books as well. Examples include Cookie Monster and the Cookie Tree (1977), in which cookies do indeed grow on trees and a witch also shares the confectionary craving, and Cookie Monster's Book of Cookie Shapes (1979) which features a wider variety of cookies prepared for a baking contest (but consumed in advance). Cookie Monster's cookie baking association has continued with recipes (as first seen in Big Bird's Busy Book) and various cookbooks.

Sometimes definitions vary as to precisely which pastries qualify as cookies, although Cookie Monster himself makes no great distinction. Tarts, as baked by the Queen of Hearts, originated as smaller versions of pies, but are commonly considered cookies. Fig Newtons were promoted in 1990s commercials as not being cookies but "fruit and cake," yet Figby certainly considers himself a smart cookie.

Though Cookie Monster is best known for his excessive compulsion of the sweets, he and several members of his family are not the only ones who take their appreciation to an extreme. The Cookie Connoisseurs Club is an exclusive organization who take their time to value the nature of cookies in wine tasting-esque fashion, preferring to admire the aroma and savor every morsel rather than gobble them down in a voracious spree.

Sometimes the moon looks like a cookie, and cookies are celebrated annually on National Cookie Day. In the United States, Girl Scouts are known for selling cookies. Santa Claus is an established cookie enthusiast, preferably with milk. Gingerbread is also often associated with Christmas, and the song "Sweet Gingerbread Man" was performed by dancing, sentient examples in episode 201 of The Muppet Show.

In addition to numerous cookie jars and plates, cookie cutters have been produced featuring both The Muppet Show characters and Sesame Street characters, along with a cookie press featuring Cookie Monster.

Cookie Monster's cookies[]

To preserve and protect the Cookie Monster puppet, real cookies are not used because the grease and oils in actual cookies would damage and stain the fur. According to claims in the 1998 book Sesame Street Unpaved and a 1999 Nogginoid spot, painted rice cakes were used.

The recipe for Cookie Monster's breakaway cookies was developed by Lara MacLean and has since been shared with the Jim Henson Company. The recipe includes pancake mix, puffed rice, grape nuts, instant coffee (for color) and hot glue for the chocolate chips.

“I've seen this in magazines recently and it gets me angry, because they still report that we spray-paint rice cakes. I've seen this recently on the Internet and it makes me angry! I swear. We don't do that anymore. Why? Mostly because of high-def. And when you're a kid at home watching and you see a cookie break up and you suddenly see white pieces from a brown cookie you know that it's fake. So I took it upon myself that―we were getting cookies sent up from Florida that I thought was ridiculous and they weren't that great anyway―and I said to myself, I'm gonna take a weekend on my own at home, I'm gonna go to the grocery store, I'm gonna buy all these grains and things and I'm gonna R&D it myself. So I did that and I came up with this recipe. And it has evolved a little bit, like sometimes I can do it different ways depending on the kind of cookie. It's mostly pancake mix, puffed rice (not Rice Krispies), grape nuts, and instant coffee for color. And the chocolate chips are hot glue, but a brown hot glue. And a thing about the hot glue is when it comes out it's really shiny and so we dull it down.”
—Lara MacLean^[1]

The same recipe and process were used on The Furchester Hotel, where the puppet costumes and props department typically baked 200 cookies per week,^[2] with approximately 1,500 cookies being baked over the course of the series.^[3]

During a panel at San Diego Comic-Con in 2014, David Rudman shared that Sesame Street writer Tony Geiss once mistakenly ate a few of the prop cookies, unaware they were fake.