The Birthday Cake for a 6 Year Old

My nephew turns six today. And yesterday was his party with 16 or 18 of his closest friends. I was part of the children's entertainment - face painting (very rusty skills from my Bunnings days) and making the cake. So, as is my usual plan, I made the cake the night before, staying home from a dinner with the Husband's friends. My nephew asked for a coconut cake. Tired of making the same Planet Cake coconut cake that I've done at least three times now, I tried a new recipe - a "melt and mix" chocolate and coconut cake from Donna Hay's "Chocolate" cookbook. Besides being probably the easiest baking recipe I have ever made, the cakes turned out beautifully. Kind of. Except for the cake fail. In my eagerness, I removed the cakes from the tins to cooling racks as per the recipe, but, for some reason I have yet to understand, I decided to try to tuen one of the cakes over. With my hands (the usual way is using another cooling rack so the weight is evenly spread). It was still warm and it broke into four fairly even quarters in my hands. Thanks to the contingency built into my cake making, I was not devastated and was actually kind of pleased that I also go to try the baked version for taste rather than relying on the bowl-licking. Too late to make another one, I got up early on Saturday and made the second cake. There were two cakes as I was making a soccer field, which was a relief as originally I was to make a Lego man and then I was asked to make SpongeBob Squarepants. Soccer field was a breeze. So two, adequately cooled square cakes later (and another trip to the shops by Husband to pick up coconut and butter for the icing) and I was ready to decorate. The icing was a Vienna Cream; the recipe was taken from the Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book (yes, the one with the train on the front). I made it light green and proceeded to ice the rectangle of cakes before me. It was fairly simple and fun. I coloured the coconut green as well to emulate grass and covered the iced cake with it. Easy. When I got to the party house, I added the goal, the soccer ball candles and a happy birthday sign and the cake was complete. Sadly the little friends had eaten so much during the day (one little girl said "I won't have any, I'm chokers") that not a lot was eaten. Though I'm sure my brother and his family are working their way into it.