In my first cake decorating class, we learned how to do 'figure piping'. This is a technique you can use to make all sorts of 3-D things out of frosting: animals, fruits, flowers, and (shown below): clowns! For our second class cake, we were shown how to build up icing to make figures. We all purchased plastic clown toppers and then used icing to make their bodies. While it wasn't something I normally would've thought to do, the cake did turn out pretty cute.
I made a 6" two layer chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream icing. Because the cake was a smaller size than usual, it seemed "cuter" than it might have if the clowns had been on a big cake.
As was the case with many of my cakes, I gave this one away to friends. (I can only eat so much cake myself!) :)