Things You'll Need:
- Chocolate and red velvet cake mixes Baking pans Assorted flavored frostings Jelly beans, M & Ms, chocolate kisses Easter egg grass Sugar cookies 12 eggs Pretzel sticks Cotton candy Pinwheel cookies Multi-colored toothpicks Licorice sticks Mint-flavored dental floss Animal crackers
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Step 1
Decide on a theme. Does your child have a favorite superhero? Nursery rhyme and fairy-tale characters are always popular. Favorite sports and games can be depicted in edible centerpieces, such as chocolate icing-coated cakes shaped as footballs or Russian teacakes iced to resemble soccer balls.
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Step 2
Plan ahead. Sketch out your centerpieces and identify each element that will require baking ahead or cooking, noting what ingredients you will need and how long each element will take to bake, cook and assemble. Work backwards from the day before the planned party to develop a schedule.
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Step 3
Collect all your ingredients and pans at least a week ahead of time. Don't forget little-used items such as colored toothpicks, food coloring and party bags. Have extras of most ingredients on hand in case something falls and breaks or is burned in the oven. Give yourself an extra day in reserve to remake something that might go wrong on first attempt.
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Step 1
Make a number of Humpty Dumpty on the wall centerpieces with cake, frosting and hard-boiled eggs. Two days in advance, hard-cook a dozen eggs. After they've cooled, use a wax stick to write each child's name on an egg. Then use food color to dye the eggs pink, blue, green, red and yellow. The wax will repel the dye and, when dry, each egg will reveal a child's name.
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Step 2
Use regular chocolate and red velvet cake mixes to prepare sheet cakes. When cooled, cut the unfrosted cakes into small "bricks."
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Step 3
Prepare vanilla frosting. Build a wall by stacking the cake bricks together, with the pieces separated by frosting mortar. Stack up to three layers high.
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Step 4
Gently wedge the dyed eggs into the top layer of frosting mortar. Decorate the bottom by using Easter basket grass sprinkled with jellybeans, M & M pieces and chocolate kisses in the grass.
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Step 1
Delight youngsters with a Jack and the Beanstalk candy centerpiece. Use an unfrosted chocolate sheet cake as the "earth" base, with six licorice sticks extending from the cake base as a beanstalk. Braid the licorice by threes, and tie the two braids together with mint-flavored dental floss.
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Step 2
Using multicolored toothpicks, insert candy footholds all along the beanstalk--colored gumdrops, jelly beans, gummy bears and miniature white and chocolate marshmallows.
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Step 3
Top the licorice beanstalk with a large, flat sugar cookie. Secure the cookie to the beanstalk using vanilla frosting as mortar. Cover the cookie in pastel cotton candy to represent clouds.
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Step 1
Make individual edible circus train centerpieces for each party table setting, using pretzel sticks, cake, cookies and animal crackers.
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Step 2
Make thick wheels for the circus cars by making sandwiches of two pinwheel cookies secured together with chocolate frosting. Two cookies will produce one wheel.
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Step 3
Make and frost a chocolate sheet cake. When cooled, cut it into rectangles that will fit atop the cookie wheels as the bed of the circus car. Secure the wheels to the cake using frosting.
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Step 4
Place pretzel sticks vertically all along the edges of the cake car-bed.
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Step 5
Stick assorted animal crackers upright into the frosting and place each completed circus car on a party plate at each child's seat.
