Curves Cake

Dear all,

The title of this post might be a bit misleading, if you have never heard of the fitness franchise 'Curves'. That is the gym I go to (highly essential stuff for a cake baker like me!). They just had their 2 year anniversary, so I decided to bake them a cake. A cake for a gym? Yes. Deal with it! This is the end result. So proud!

Interested in the process? Then first you need a cake. I made my favourite cake, the Chocolate Guinness Cake , a recipe by Nigella Lawson. Rather than put the cream on top though, I used it to tort the cake.


I actually learned a new technique: damming. Normally if you put cream in between two cake layers it can squish out. A nifty trick is to pipe a ring of buttercream around the edge, it stops the cream from escaping. Brilliant! The rest of the cake is covered in buttercream as an underlayer to the fondant so it blends in perfectly.


There it is, a buttercreamed cake and purple fondant over it (purple is a Curves colour).  Now for the decorations. I decided to make some of the Curves machines to go on the cake. A bit of a challenge, but they worked out great! See proof below.


Left the basic set up of the three machines I made. On the right the first one is done!


And an overview of the other two machines. If you're thinking, those don't look like gym machines! Then you've never been to a Curves. Their machines are different and my fondant versions are spot on! (and if the bakers out there are thinking: fondant? Yes. I couldn't find any sugar paste!)

Here are all the bits and pieces I made to use on the cake as decoration. You've got the machines, the letters for 'Curves', and '2 jaar' which means '2 years' in Dutch. And sunflowers. The sunflower is a reference to a Curves design used to congratulate members on their 200th workout (200 workouts - 2 years curves. get it?).


And the result! I'm pretty proud of the result. I hadn't done any decorating in a while, I still have 'the touch' so to speak. In fact, someone mentioned my first cake decorating attempt from several years ago. What an improvement! I'm almost embarassed to think of that cake now (I'm not going to tell you which one it is, ha!). Next week: a cake inspired by a picture I found online. This cake has gone global - the piggy mud cake. So check back next week for my version, with a twist!

xoxo Jennifer