I was just looking around for some kid's birthday cakes, and wow, there are some cool ones. Some of the ones you can order are pretty great, but they're also pricey. In taking a closer look, some of these could be made at home. I think some of the simplest ones are the ones shaped like numbers. I've done some before. Simple shapes and straight lines are really quite do-able. They're not nearly as difficult as they might look, although they do take a bit of patience sometimes. Have you tried making shaped or other special cakes for kids birthdays? You could save a ton of money doing it yourself.
My kids school had a cake raffle and I made a snake cake. It was very easy to make. You just bake two cakes in bundt pans then cut them and ice them together to make the body of the cake. Shape the head and tail and then ice and decorate. It took a long time to ice it and we had to have a large cardboard to put the cake on to transport it but it looked fantastic. It was really inexpensive to make as well. I used store bought icing that was on sale and piped it on. I just added food colouring to the vanilla icing to make the other colour. Here's a picture of a snake cake similar to what I made.
