It turns out the cookies are real â sort of.
They are baked at the home of Lara MacLean, who has been a âpuppet wranglerâ for the Jim Henson Company for almost three decades. MacLean started as an intern for Sesame Workshop in 1992 and has been working for the team ever since.
The recipe, roughly: Pancake mix, puffed rice, Grape-Nuts and instant coffee, with water in the mixture. The chocolate chips are made using hot glue sticks â essentially colored gobs of glue.
The cookies do not have oils, fats or sugars. Those would stain Cookie Monster. Theyâre edible, but barely. âKind of like a dog treat,â MacLean says.
Before she reinvented the recipe in the 2000s, the creative team behind âSesame Streetâ used versions of rice crackers and foams to make the cookies. The challenge was that the rice crackers would make more of a mess and get stuck in Cookieâs fur. And the foams didnât look like cookies once they broke apart.
Cookie has been portrayed since 2001 by David Rudman, who took over the role from Frank Oz. Rudmanâs right hand moves the mouth, which is eating, and his left hand holds the cookies. Both work in concert to break the cookies, which means they have to be soft enough to fall apart.
Rudman said soft cookies are best, adding, âThe more crumbs, the funnier it is. If he eats the cookie, and it only breaks into two pieces if itâs too hard, itâs just not funny,â he said. âIt looks almost painful. But if he eats a cookie and it explodes into a hundred crumbs, thatâs where the comedy comes from.â
MacLean has perfected a recipe that is âthin enough that itâll explode into a hundred crumbs,â Rudman said. âBut itâs not too thin that itâll break in my hand when Iâm holding it.â
Not every (human) guest realizes that the cookies arenât meant to be eaten. Adam Sandler appeared on an episode and decided to share in the muppet's delight by spontaneously eating a cookie with him on set.
âAs soon as the cameras cut, he was like, âBlech!' â MacLean said.
