For our daughter's 6^th birthday, my wife came up with the idea to have a cake that looks like a pumpkin patch. Here's a picture of the end result.

I'm not going to go into too much detail with food but here are some ideas that my wife and I came up with...

Green Eyeball Ice Cubes

This recipe is my interpretation of the classic 'eyeball ice cube.' Instead of dropping pealed grapes into ice trays, now you can have the ice cube itself look like an eye. Here is what you need:

• a deviled egg tray or Easter egg decorating tray (see picture)
• 1 jar maraschino cherries (I've tried this recipe with different candy, such as Gummy Savers and jelly beans, but they don't work well. Even though the eyes looked great, eating soggy candy pulp was not very pleasant.)
• 1 cup water
• green food color

Instructions

1. Use a knife to cut the cherries in half.
2. Rinse the cherry slices to remove all of the red syrup.
3. Add one cherry slice into the bottom of each egg holder.
4. Add one drop of green food color to 1 cup of water and stir.
5. Fill each egg holder with the colored water.
6. Place the egg tray in the freezer until the water freezes.

Cupcake Witch

My daughter was set on having a witch birthday cake. We couldn't find bakery cakes that we liked and didn't like any of the recipes on the Internet for a witch cake so we decided to do something different. Instead of a birthday cake, we made birthday cupcakes that we pushed together into the shape of a witch and decorated with frosting, sprinkles, Twizzlers, and jellybeans. The finished cake turned out really great and required no knife to cut. We liked this idea so much that we'll probably do similar 'cakes' in the future.

Here is a mock-up that I made beforehand to get an idea of how to arrange the cupcakes and the finished cake with icing and decorations.