Let's start with the seed of an idea

Remember these? My friend asked me for a recipe for how I made them today, and I thought the tumblrverse might also be interested.

Meredith’s guide to awesome Cookie Monster cupcakes:
You will need:
Some cupcakes, any flavour will do. My icing recipe is roughly enough for 12.
About 100g butter
About a cup of icing sugar (this isn’t exact, you should add it gradually until you get to the texture you want)
Hot water (to mix the icing)
Some kind of flavouring for the icing- I use vanilla, but strawberry is good too.
White chocolate buttons, the biggest kind you can get.
Desiccated coconut (About a quarter of a standard sized bag)
Blue food colouring (a lot of it! Between the icing and the coconut, you will use about half the bottle)
Chocolate chip biscuits of some kind. If you are feeling particularly like a domestic goddess, you could make your own, but I use Chocolate Chippies. You’ll need about 1/3 of a biscuit for each cake.
A black icing pen (though you could make black icing yourself, it’s hard to get as good an effect)

To make them:
Start by making the eyes. You’ll put a dot from the black icing pen on each chocolate button. If you put them near the edge of the button, they’ll turn out looking googly, which is what we’re going for.
To start on the cakes themselves, cut the top of each cupcake parallel to the plate to go about halfway through the cake. This is Cookie Monster’s mouth. Make another incision not quite on the top of each cake, on a slight diagonal. This is where the eyes will go in.
Next, let’s make the icing. Beat the butter and icing sugar together with some hot water to mix, until fluffy. Then add several drops of your chosen flavour. Finally, you’ll need to add heaps of blue food colouring. This will probably get all over your fingers, but will wash off after a few days. Spread this icing liberally over the cakes, though you will want to make sure you still have access to the mouth and eye slots.
Then, assemble the cakes by putting the eyes and biscuit in their respective orifices.
To make Cookie Monster look fluffy, put your coconut in a bowl, and add blue food colouring. You’ll need more than you think to get the right shade of blue. Once your coconut is satisfyingly odd-looking, sprinkle it all over the monsters.

Now you have some Cookie Monster cakes to share with your friends, and blue fingers with which to freak people out!

Disclaimer: All of the measurements for the icing are really approximate, I usually just add ingredients in bits until it’s the right consistency.