It turns out the cookies are real ā sort of.
They are baked at the home of Lara MacLean, who has been a āpuppet wranglerā 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 ā essentially colored gobs of glue.
The cookies do not have oils, fats or sugars. Those would stain Cookie Monster. Theyāre edible, but barely. āKind of like a dog treat,ā MacLean says.
Before she reinvented the recipe in the 2000s, the creative team behind āSesame Streetā 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 Cookieās fur. And the foams didnāt look like cookies once they broke apart.
Cookie has been portrayed since 2001 by David Rudman, who took over the role from Frank Oz. Rudmanās 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, āThe more crumbs, the funnier it is. If he eats the cookie, and it only breaks into two pieces if itās too hard, itās just not funny,ā he said. āIt looks almost painful. But if he eats a cookie and it explodes into a hundred crumbs, thatās where the comedy comes from.ā
MacLean has perfected a recipe that is āthin enough that itāll explode into a hundred crumbs,ā Rudman said. āBut itās not too thin that itāll break in my hand when Iām holding it.ā
Not every (human) guest realizes that the cookies arenāt 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.
āAs soon as the cameras cut, he was like, āBlech!' ā MacLean said.
