A “puppet wrangler” has revealed how she bakes cookies for Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster, but they are not the warm, buttery treat you would expect.
Lara MacLean has worked over three decades for the Jim Henson Company, the people behind big puppet brands such as The Muppets and Sesame Street, explaining to The New York Times that one of her roles is to bake real cookies for the Cookie Monster.
For those unfamiliar with the Cookie Monster, he is a star of the children’s television show Sesame Street, a bedraggled creature that has an appetite only for cookies and, when he isn’t eating them, is often bellowing out his catchphrase, “Me want cookie.”
The fuzzy blue monster is often seen shoveling cookies into his face, getting chunks and crumbs everywhere but into his mouth.
Ms MacLean told the newspaper that the Cookie Monster couldn’t just eat any old cookie – they have to be perfectly constructed to give the illusion they disappear when decimated by the monster.
The recipe consists of pancake mix, puffed rice, Grape-Nuts cereal, instant coffee and water to mix it all together.
Brown hot glue is added after they are baked to create the “chocolate chips”.
Around two dozen cookies are baked for each episode, but this part of Ms MacLean’s day job has to be done in her own kitchen as there isn’t an oven big enough at Sesame Street’s New York HQ.
Cookie Monster can be seen holding one of MacLean’s pancake mix and hot glue cookies— (Picture Alliance/Getty Images)
“My landlord came in my apartment at that time and I had all these cookies around and I was like, ‘I’m really sorry, I can’t offer you a cookie.’ And he probably just thought I was really mean,” she told The New York Times.
Regular cookies are not used because the oils and fats would stain the puppet too often, so the Cookie Monster has to deal with devouring something more similar to a “dog treat,” Ms MacLean said to the paper.
The cookies have been through a series of iterations; previously, they were made out of rice crackers and foam, but they stuck to Cookie Monster’s blue fur and weren’t realistic enough.
Now Ms MacLean has perfected the recipe to make them soft enough for David Rudman, who has portrayed the Cookie Monster since 2001, to break up in his hand quickly to make it seem like Cookie is chaotically scoffing them down, leaving a huge mess.
Mr Rudman told The New York Times that the best cookies are when they “explode into a hundred crumbs,” giving the sketch its comedic edge.
Sesame Street is one of the longest-running shows in the world, airing for over five decades.
The Cookie Monster and Ms MacLean’s unusual cookies can still be caught in new episodes on Max.
