Oscar the grouch cake:

I was babysitting for a neighbor today and wanted a project to do with the girls to help pass the time. This is what we came up with. It was easy to do with kids because the frosting doesn't have to be smoothed out since it's the monsters messy hair.

You will need:

• Green frosting (I made up a 16 oz box of powder sugar and used almost the whole thing.)
• Mini Marshmallows
• 2 raisins
• 1 box of cake mix
• foil
• electrical tape
• a round disposable lid to act as the trash can lid

Here is how I did it:

1. Bake a cake from a box in 2 circular pans.
2. After the cake cools cut 1 layer in half. (creating 2 semi-circles.)
3. Frost the flat sides of the semi-circles and put them together. Put the flat sides of the cake down on a cake stand.
4. Make or buy some green frosting. spread it all over the cake. Once you have a good thick layer over the whole thing use a spoon or fork and tap the frosting with the back side of the utensil. This will give it the look of fur. (Then we put on some green sprinkles just for fun.)
5. Next I gave the kids some mini marshmallows for the eyes. The pupils are raisins.
6. to do the eye brows I just took my left over frosting and added some red to it trying to get it sort of brown. we just blobbed it on. The messier the better.
7. the trash can lid is a lid from an empty container of oatmeal wrapped in foil. For the handle of the lid I used some black electrical tape. then I put a blob of frosting on the underside to keep it on Oscar's head.

This same basic idea could work for almost any Sesame street monster.

Happy baking!