I was planning to make cakes from scratch for my little guy's first birthday party, but got horrifically sick with a mild case of death the week before. So, I copped out and bought 2 of the large size frozen pound cakes, and 1 large can of frosting. I let the cakes sit out for a few minutes, then sliced them into the shapes I wanted with a kitchen knife. One huge plus to copping out and using pound cake was that there were very few crumbs to crumb coat with the icing. For the different colors, I simply put some of the icing in a bowl, then added and mixed in food coloring til I was satisfied with the color. OK, I wasn't super-excited about dark pink, but I could NOT get that stinker to turn red! If I hadn't been recovering from death, I might have slicked down the icing with a milk-dipped knife.
Not perfect, but cute enough for a family birthday party, and since he'd never had cake before, he thought it was AWESOME! And so did my family, they're used to home-baked, but they loved the marshmallows on top and I bought REALLY yummy icing.