Cinnamon Stars or Cinnamon Apple for Wise Men Story

If you cut an apple in slices horizontally the segments of the core form a star shape. If you want to emphasize the "star" portion of the story, you can slice the fruit this way, then sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. However, this method wastes a fair bit of the apple, since the top and bottom portions do not have the star centre.

Alternatively you can demonstrate the "hidden star" with one apple, and slice and core the rest of the apples more conventionally, arrange them on a serving plate, then sprinkle them with the spice mix.

Cinnamon sugar is simple to make, just remember that it requires very little cinnamon in relation to the sugar (perhaps one Tablespoon cinnamon to one cup of sugar).

Magi Spice Cake

You may only have time for children to decorate the cake. Use any favourite spice cake recipe. I use one having 1 cup applesauce that makes it very moist. The spices represent the gifts of the magi.

Preferably, bake the cake in a tube (ring-shaped) pan. Traditionally, the ring shape represents the crown of a king. It can also represent the circular journey the magi took (i.e. returning home by a different way).

In class, make a simple butter icing. You might want to use yellow food colouring to represent the gift of gold. The children can spread on the icing, then decorate with a variety of "jewels" fit for a king. Gold and silver balls, glace cherries, assorted sprinkles -- I've even found star-shaped sprinkles!

King's Cake

Another tradition is to hide trinkets in the cake, sometimes one, sometimes three. The person finding a trinket is "king for a day," or if you want to focus on wise men rather than kings, "blessed with wisdom!"

Traditionally, the trinkets were dried beans (e.g. white kidney beans), which can be inserted before or after baking. You could instead wrap coins in wax paper.

One church I know of had a tradition of wrapping a coin, a thimble, and a toy ring. All involved the idea of wisdom. The one finding the dollar coin was asked to invest it for a year and donate the proceeds (not a great task!). The person finding the ring was to make the cake for the following year (meaning they had to have a good memory!). The person finding the thimble had to make something for the church in the next year (e.g. a wall hanging, a floral arrangement, a shelf, or whatever).

(See more about King's Cake in a another post below and also in the Epiphany King Cake topic.)

WARNING: Avoid hiding anything that might break a tooth or be bad to swallow! Insert edible things (like different kinds of candy) from the bottom of the cake AFTER it is baked (so no one will know in advance which slice it will be in -- except the one cutting the cake should know where NOT to cut.) Not finding a "baby Jesus" or a "ring" may be less exciting, but they're not worth breaking a tooth either.

King's Crown Cake

Additional suggestion posted by MMB:

Make a "Kings Crown" Cake. Usually made in a Bundt pan or a round pan and frosted with yellow/gold icing, the kids can add triangular cookies to make the points and decorate with gumdrops/candy "jewels."