Sesame Street has been a favorite TV show for decades, and these fuzzy characters aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Whether you are decorating cookies, cupcakes or creating an entire Sesame Street-themed cake, Big Bird, Elmo, Oscar the Grouch and all of their friends provide perfect inspiration! (For more inspiration, check out some of our favorite Sesame Street cakes.)

These sweet and simple cupcake tutorials were created by Annie, and you can find more recipes and tutorials on her blog at Annie Eats. Read on for Annie’s Sesame Street cupcake tutorial!

Sesame Street Cupcakes

Materials

Cupcakes, any flavor
Fondant (homemade or store bought)
Marshmallows
Orange candies such as M&Ms
Pastry bags
Pastry tips (small star tip, V tip, grass/fur tip, and plain round tip such as #2)
Red fruit leather
Red, yellow, green, brown, and black icing colors
Vanilla buttercream

1. Before you start decorating, you will of course need cupcakes.  I recommend baking the cupcakes in grease-proof liners in the colors of the characters you are making for a nice appearance with continuity from wrapper to frosting.

2. Before you frost any of the cupcakes, get all your pieces together by making some sets of eyes and mouths out of fondant.  If you have never worked with fondant before, don’t be scared!  It’s really just like playing with Play-Doh. You can use store bought or homemade fondant. I used a variety of pastry tips and round cookie cutters to make these shapes.  There is no right or wrong size, just play around with what you have and see what works best for you.  Keep in mind that you won’t need fondant mouths for the Big Bird or Cookie Monster cupcakes.

Elmo Cupcake

3. Let’s start out with the easiest 0f the four characters – Elmo.  Fill a pastry bag fitted with a small star tip with red frosting.  (There are many, many tips that will work for this look.  Just use whatever you prefer.)  Cover the surface of the cupcakes in an even layer of red piped frosting.

4. Top each cupcake with a pair of eyes, a mouth, and an orange nose.  Depending on the size of eyeballs you use, a variety of orange candies could work.  I ended up using a plain orange M&M but an orange Runt or an orange pretzel M&M could also work well.  Check it out!  You just made Elmo.

Big Bird Cupcake

1. Alright, moving on to Big Bird…the first thing you’ll want to do is cut marshmallows into beak shapes with a pair of scissors.

2. Line each of the beaks with red fruit leather and trim the excess.

3. Place a beak on each cupcake, using a small dollop of frosting to glue it on.

4. Cover the marshmallow in stripes of yellow frosting.  It doesn’t need to be neat yet, just enough to cover them.

5. Use a small offset spatula or a knife to smooth the frosting over the beak.

6. Fill a pastry bag fitted with a “V” tip with yellow frosting.  Make a ring of yellow feathers around the perimeter of the cupcake.

7. Repeat this process, working from the outside in, until the surface of the cupcake has been completely covered by “feathers”.

8. Add a set of eyeballs just above the beak.  Pipe a thin line of aqua and light pink frosting over the eyeballs.  Look!  It’s Big Bird!

Oscar the Grouch Cupcake

1. To make Oscar the Grouch cupcakes, fill a pastry bag fitted with a grass/fur piping tip with green frosting.  Cover the surface of the cupcake with fur.

2. Top each cupcake with a pair of eyeballs and a fondant mouth.  To make the tongues, I cut out small circles of red fondant with the base end of a pastry tip.  I cut each circle in half and then removed a small “V” in the middle with a paring knife to make the tongue shape.

3. Use a small star tip (many varieties will work) to pipe a brown set of eyebrows over the eyeballs.  Don’t worry about making these neat…I don’t think Oscar is really into eyebrow maintenance.  Hey!  It’s Oscar the Grouch!

That’s pretty much it.  If at any time your buttercream starts melting from the heat of your hands, , just pop the pastry bag into the fridge for 10-15 minutes and then proceed.