I thought my cake decoration was correct

I would welcome your opinion.

Photo by Marek Studzinski on Unsplash

I recently wrote an article about my school days, well some of them. The theme of the post was I would not blame my school for my failures in later life. (Actually, I didn’t have many failures, but it sounds dramatic.)

In that article I wrote how five of us, all boys, were sort of lost in an educational limbo.

But we were not initially abandoned. Somebody somewhere had a very good, and at that time, a very progressive idea. We were going to have cookery lessons.

I have no idea if boys these days get cookery lessons, but I am sure we were the first boys in our school to take what was then called domestic science, and now, I am reliably told, is called home economics. What the difference is I have no idea, I am sure someone, probably a lady, will explain.

Now the passing of the years has made it difficult for me to remember who taught us, and I cannot recall girls being in the class, but I remember all five of us took to cooking like the proverbial ducks take to water.

I remember making very good meat pies and an excellent steak and kidney pudding. The praise excellent came from my dad, we were allowed to take the fruit of our labours home with us.

Now this article is not about my Micheline star culinary skills; it is about my cake decorating skills.

And not just any old cake, but a Christmas cake, and how I believe I did not deserve the, admittedly very mild, criticism for my cake Christmas cake decoration.

Let me explain.

Once I had completed the cooking and icing of my excellent Christmas cake (the accolade of excellence was from my dad and my brother and his wife) I needed some decoration on the plain white icing covering my masterpiece, and I believed a star would be the crowning glory.

The only problem was I needed a star to copy.

Now I grew up in the Hoxton area of east London, and like most of the east end of the city, we had a large population of Jewish people.

My walk to school was through Hoxton’s street market and many of the businesses on that street were owned by Jewish people; and many of them displayed a perfect star on the front of their premises, one that I had seen looking at for years, so I copied it.

My Christmas cake was finished with splendid copy of the Star of David.

Now for some reason all of our cakes were put on display and some teachers came along to view them.

When they arrived at my cake I was puzzled by the silly grins and, what I believed, was a derogatory remark. Although I confess, I didn’t hear it very well. Or maybe I was paranoid. 😀

I cannot remember if the teachers were judging our cakes and awarding a prize for the best one. If they were, I didn’t win it.

Now I don’t know when and where I was when I saw the light. I realised the reason for the mild mockery my Christmas cake received.

I had put the Star of David, a symbol of Judaism, onto a Christmas cake, a symbol of Christianity.

I realise many people would find this not to their liking, and for some time I accepted this, but then I started to think about it.

Christmas is a time when people celebrate the birth of Christ (not his birthday) and wasn’t Jesus Jewish?

Probably the most famous Jewish person in the Western world, if not the whole world, far more famous than the second most famous Jewish person in the world, Bob Dylan, although I think his Bobness had the edge on Jesus in record sales.

But this was because he had the unfair advantage of being born in the twentieth century and had the use of twentieth and twenty first century technology, but I am digressing and being flippant in my digression; I apologise.🙄

Back to the theme of this article, my Christmas cake decoration and why I believe I did not deserve the mild mockery I think I received.

Jesus was a Jewish prophet and the man who inspired the Christian religion. I think the Star of David was the right star for my cake.

What do you think?

Thanks for reading.

©Barry Robinson 2026

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