Kids

• Kids' cakes are easy to make. You can make a simple cake for a baseball fan by using a round cake pan, frosting the cake with white frosting and drawing curved lines on it in red frosting (or using red licorice).
  
  If your child likes clowns, use a round cake pan to bake the cake and frost with white frosting. Take two cookies and push one into either side of the cake to make ears and frost with the white frosting. Use thin red licorice ropes curled at the top of the cake as hair. Make circles for the clown eyes with black frosting and use a pointed ice cream cone as a nose sticking a cherry on the end with a dab of frosting to make it stick. Use candy lips or draw some out of frosting.
  
  

Holiday

• Making a cake for a holiday is a great way to show your creativity. For Halloween you can back a cake in an oven-safe glass bowl, frost the cake with orange frosting and use brown frosting to make a jack-o'-lantern face.
  
  You can use the same bowl to make an Easter egg cake for Easter. Cut the cake to make it an oval shape and frost it in several bright colors of frosting.
  
  If you have a bundt pan, you can make a Christmas wreath cake. Bake the cake in it then frost with green frosting, brushing lightly with a basting brush to make the frosting look like pine needles. Use red colored frosting to create balls on the cake to look like ornaments. Use colorful candy balls to look like garland.
  
  

Incognito

• A fun cake idea is one that doesn't look like a cake at all. Buy an azalea terra cotta planter or similar pot and wash carefully. Fill the pot with cake batter and bake. Do not preheat your oven as this can cause your pot to crack. Once the cake is cool, frost with chocolate frosting and cover with Oreo cookies that have been broken into crumbs. The smashed cookies should look like soil. Buy plastic flowers and place into the cake once they are washed. You can add gummy worms around the "soil" and even candy rocks as accents.
  
  As Alton Brown star of the Food network show "Good Eats" mentions in his book "I'm Just Here for the Food," serve your cake with a new mortar trowel picked up at the hardware store or a flat gardening trowel.