**The Art of Cake Decorating: A Story of Trial and Error**

As I stood in front of my kitchen counter, staring at the empty menu board, I knew I had to make do with what I had. The cinnamon bun cake was no longer an option, so I decided to use it as a base for my butter croissant cake. I felt like it would pair perfectly with the caramel and chocolate flavors I wanted to incorporate into the recipe. After all, when you're working with a pastry dough that's already flavored with nuts, what's a little extra nutty goodness going to hurt?

I began by spreading almond buttercream on my plain croissant, carefully crafting the edges to resemble the flaky layers of a real butter croissant. Next, I added a layer of Rich buttercream, which I mixed specifically for this cake. But why use just one type of buttercream when you can mix and match? I took the Italian Meringue buttercream recipe and incorporated it with some almond butter to give it a richer color and a more complex flavor profile.

As I worked on my butter croissant cake, I couldn't help but think about how different each cake was going to be. The tiramisu cake, for example, would get a coffee concentrate that I made by dissolving instant coffee in hot water. This way, I could control the amount of liquid added to the buttercream and make it more intense if needed. But then again, who needs to drink coffee when you can eat it in cake form? That's why I decided to create a coffee-flavored buttercream that would complement the espresso powder-infused chocolate cake.

The pistachio croissant was next on my agenda. This one required a different approach altogether – a swirl pattern created using a small spatula and repeated strokes of icing. It was surprisingly hard, but I managed to achieve a beautiful striped effect that added texture and visual interest to the cake. And then there was the PE can, which I decided to decorate with a drizzle of caramel and a sprinkle of chocolate shavings on top. It was almost too pretty to eat.

But wait, what about the almond croissant? How would I decorate it without making it look like a mess? The answer lay in using sliced almonds to create delicate curls that added a touch of whimsy to the cake. And speaking of whimsy, the final cake had to be special – after all, it was for Mother's Day! So I went with a smooth butter croissant, topped with a generous helping of raspberry jam and some fresh raspberries on top. The result was almost too beautiful to eat.

Or so I thought. As I sliced into each cake, the aroma wafting up from the layers made my mouth water in anticipation. And that's when it hit me – this whole ordeal had been about experimentation and taking risks. By trying new flavors and techniques, I'd created six unique cakes that were all uniquely delicious in their own ways.

**Six Cakes, One Happy Artist**

As I sat down to enjoy each cake, one by one, I couldn't help but feel a sense of accomplishment. After all the trial and error, the setbacks and successes, it had all been worth it. And when I looked at each cake on its own, I realized that they weren't just different – they were special in their own ways. The tiramisu cake was intense and bold, while the pistachio croissant was light and airy. Each one told a story of its own, and I felt grateful to have been able to share it with all of you.

And so, as I took my final bite of that last cake, I knew that this had been more than just a baking project – it had been an artistic journey. One that required patience, creativity, and a willingness to take risks. And in the end, it was all worth it for the joy of creating something truly special, one layer at a time.

**A Special Message from the Artist**

Happy Mother's Day, everyone! I want to thank my lovely family for putting up with me as I spent countless hours in the kitchen, experimenting with new recipes and techniques. Without their love and support, this wouldn't have been possible. And to all of you out there who are just starting your own baking journey, I say keep going – even when things don't turn out as planned. It's those mistakes that lead to the most unexpected successes!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome back to how to cake it I'm Yolanda and this week I'm caking something special for Mother's Day because mothers deserve it a former me already removed leveled and layered all these beautiful mini cakes she is much less frizzy hair straight hair in fact and she's wearing a lilac top let's cut to her I have two vanilla which I'm going to level in layer what I love about making mini cakes is I'm not very particular if they're all the same height so free today and you know what else I'm not going to cut away the caramelization yeah that's right cuz the croissants are so beautifully caramelized this cake is a vanilla spice cake so it's my vanilla batter and then I swirl in some sugar and spices oh this smells so good now I want a coffee I feel like this is my favorite this is my cinnamon bun cake so you make a mixture of melted butter sugar spices and then swirl it in it gets a little bit gooey like a cinnamon bun okay now I got to clean up the crumbs so I can switch to Chocolate so here I have six mini cakes two vanilla two chocolate one spice and one cinnamon bun yum and of course the first thing I need to do is shower them with simple syrup in this box I have some croissants from one of my favorite bakeries it's outside of Toronto but worth the drive this is not an ad but I love the croissants from Bartholomew Bakery love them so any excuse for me to buy them is good okay so on the closeup I'm going to point out what they are ready these are chocolate croissants these are twice baked pistachio croissants these are butter croissants classic I'm going to J them up just a little bit these are almond croissants which twice baked as well and almond croissants are my favorite these are a pecan caramel croissant and then these are their sort of special I don't even want to touch them yet you see these These are tiasu croissants I'm going to save the best of each one for the top of each cake and then I'm going to cut the second one to fit within the cake yeah so I'll cut this one this is really beautiful I think it might be a bit heavy on top of the cake all right I'm ready I'm going to start with the butter croissant I'm going to level these as if they're cake just so that the cake isn't wonky inside and the whole cake stays level when it's put together so now we have the tiis Su so the filling sort of runs down the center but I feel like I need to keep all this good filling inside so for this one I want to do the opposite but I can't turn it over so I'm going to have to get creative so here we have it I'm just going to clean up we're going to eat some snacks and then I'm going to start to assemble all right I think I'm I think I'm okay let me just read my list I made a look at my chart that I made myself everyone so I'd keep tabs on like what croissant what cake how I'm going to fill it how I'm going to decorate it I'm going to pipe a fence of Italian ring buttercream and then I'm going to spread some of this delicious pistachio spread it's not the most Pleasant green you know it kind of looks a bit like baby poop at times you know when it's spinach week I'm sorry I'm sorry but this video is about moms so I think I'm allowed to talk about that and now I'm going to lay in this beautiful pistachio croissant and instead of torturing myself trying to ice around this I'm just going to pipe a fence on a fence on a fence does that make sense and now I need the top cake to stick even more of an excuse to spread a little more of this pistachio spread I don't need as much as the bottom and now I'm going to lay this beautiful top layer on top look at this that looks like it's just it has way too much filling a cake like this wouldn't even stand up if there was nothing in the middle now I'm going to work on my crumb coat yay okay we're moving on to pean which is a pecan caramel croissant I'm going to go all out and use a brown sugar buttercream here doesn't that sound good when I baked these cakes it was a cinnamon bun croissant on the menu but sadly they didn't have it today so I'm still going to use the cinnamon bun cake cuz I feel like it goes with the flavor profile I want to use caramel to stick the top layer and because it's a pean caramel croissant you know I'm going to add more caramel right for the butter croissant I'm using chocolate cake Rich buttercream which is my buttercream made with whole eggs and then I have some raspberry jalet that I made for my giant fruit cream sandwich cookie and it's so tasty and I thought what would I want to eat on a butter croissant I'd probably want a bit of butter and jam I did the wrong thing I used chocolate cake and I was going to do this on spice cake what do I do now oh my gosh guys even the chart couldn't help me maybe this is a happy mistake maybe this is going to be the most delicious cake I've ever had and it'll be like me discovering penicillin now I'm working on the chocolate croissant cake and I know what you're thinking you're thinking I should have put the chocolate croissant in chocolate cake but I kind of wanted to mimic the way the croissant is you know plain dough and the chocolate's just in the middle for the Almond I'm going to mix some almond butter into Italian Maring buttercream I'm going to mix a little Rich buttercream with the Italian Marine buttercream because I need to save enough for the butter croissant cake but I want a richer color and this one's pretty straight up I'm just going to spread almond buttercream now I'm going to place my almond croissant all right so we are at the tiramisu cake for this is this what I planned yeah it is so I've made my coffee concentrate which is just instant coffee with a little bit of hot water so it's really thick and potent and this way you don't add too much liquid to your buttercream and you can make this to taste if you prefer sweeter coffee you could put this into the brown sugar buttercream chocolate cake chisu croissant which has some filling in it and I'm going to make some coffee buttercream because that's my absolute favorite flavor so I want to decorate each cake in a different way kind of like I did my cakes in layer up so this one I'm going to ice and use a cake comb so I'm going to create a striped pattern with a small spatula it's nothing it's it's really um this is like an easy way to decorate a cake without a fancy tool and it creates a nice texture okay pistachio and now I'm going to place the pistachio croissant on top come with me oh I want to eat this now so this is the PE can and I think for this I want to do a swirl pattern it seems appropriate all you have to do is keep redrawing the letter C in different directions into the buttercream peekin croissant and then I'm going to drizzle the top with caramel PE can chocolate doesn't it look so luscious look at that really oh oh okay so comb is going to make a nice pattern this is actually hard because the cake is so small I'm happy just a beauty a beauty and then to finish oh I like that I was going to do a drizzle but I did that with caramel that's so two cakes ago almond I'm not even sure how I want to decorate this but the reason I'm doing this is because I want you all to know know that you can decorate a cake a smooth cake is the hardest cake it looks the simplest but it leaves no room for error so if you add a texture then you can do no wrong and you can just keep doing it until you're happy and then I have sliced almonds I hope I don't wreck it let's see oh no I'm not wrecking so you want to be very light-handed look at that this one looks very different and now I have these like curls ooh now since this is for the plain croissant first of all I'm not going to call it plain butter the butter croissant I am going to ice it as smooth as I can you're not Smo smooth enough okay I'm yelling at my cake I'm going to not that a butter croissant needs anything else but because I put the raspberry jalet inside I want some on top the butter is going to stop the jam from sinking down the whole point is the you know the crisp flakiness on the outside and the soft inside so how else would I demonstrate this okay guys happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there and happy Mother's Day to me cuz now I get to eat six cakes yes m M M M what can I say nothing I'll see you all next week I'm taking this with mewelcome back to how to cake it I'm Yolanda and this week I'm caking something special for Mother's Day because mothers deserve it a former me already removed leveled and layered all these beautiful mini cakes she is much less frizzy hair straight hair in fact and she's wearing a lilac top let's cut to her I have two vanilla which I'm going to level in layer what I love about making mini cakes is I'm not very particular if they're all the same height so free today and you know what else I'm not going to cut away the caramelization yeah that's right cuz the croissants are so beautifully caramelized this cake is a vanilla spice cake so it's my vanilla batter and then I swirl in some sugar and spices oh this smells so good now I want a coffee I feel like this is my favorite this is my cinnamon bun cake so you make a mixture of melted butter sugar spices and then swirl it in it gets a little bit gooey like a cinnamon bun okay now I got to clean up the crumbs so I can switch to Chocolate so here I have six mini cakes two vanilla two chocolate one spice and one cinnamon bun yum and of course the first thing I need to do is shower them with simple syrup in this box I have some croissants from one of my favorite bakeries it's outside of Toronto but worth the drive this is not an ad but I love the croissants from Bartholomew Bakery love them so any excuse for me to buy them is good okay so on the closeup I'm going to point out what they are ready these are chocolate croissants these are twice baked pistachio croissants these are butter croissants classic I'm going to J them up just a little bit these are almond croissants which twice baked as well and almond croissants are my favorite these are a pecan caramel croissant and then these are their sort of special I don't even want to touch them yet you see these These are tiasu croissants I'm going to save the best of each one for the top of each cake and then I'm going to cut the second one to fit within the cake yeah so I'll cut this one this is really beautiful I think it might be a bit heavy on top of the cake all right I'm ready I'm going to start with the butter croissant I'm going to level these as if they're cake just so that the cake isn't wonky inside and the whole cake stays level when it's put together so now we have the tiis Su so the filling sort of runs down the center but I feel like I need to keep all this good filling inside so for this one I want to do the opposite but I can't turn it over so I'm going to have to get creative so here we have it I'm just going to clean up we're going to eat some snacks and then I'm going to start to assemble all right I think I'm I think I'm okay let me just read my list I made a look at my chart that I made myself everyone so I'd keep tabs on like what croissant what cake how I'm going to fill it how I'm going to decorate it I'm going to pipe a fence of Italian ring buttercream and then I'm going to spread some of this delicious pistachio spread it's not the most Pleasant green you know it kind of looks a bit like baby poop at times you know when it's spinach week I'm sorry I'm sorry but this video is about moms so I think I'm allowed to talk about that and now I'm going to lay in this beautiful pistachio croissant and instead of torturing myself trying to ice around this I'm just going to pipe a fence on a fence on a fence does that make sense and now I need the top cake to stick even more of an excuse to spread a little more of this pistachio spread I don't need as much as the bottom and now I'm going to lay this beautiful top layer on top look at this that looks like it's just it has way too much filling a cake like this wouldn't even stand up if there was nothing in the middle now I'm going to work on my crumb coat yay okay we're moving on to pean which is a pecan caramel croissant I'm going to go all out and use a brown sugar buttercream here doesn't that sound good when I baked these cakes it was a cinnamon bun croissant on the menu but sadly they didn't have it today so I'm still going to use the cinnamon bun cake cuz I feel like it goes with the flavor profile I want to use caramel to stick the top layer and because it's a pean caramel croissant you know I'm going to add more caramel right for the butter croissant I'm using chocolate cake Rich buttercream which is my buttercream made with whole eggs and then I have some raspberry jalet that I made for my giant fruit cream sandwich cookie and it's so tasty and I thought what would I want to eat on a butter croissant I'd probably want a bit of butter and jam I did the wrong thing I used chocolate cake and I was going to do this on spice cake what do I do now oh my gosh guys even the chart couldn't help me maybe this is a happy mistake maybe this is going to be the most delicious cake I've ever had and it'll be like me discovering penicillin now I'm working on the chocolate croissant cake and I know what you're thinking you're thinking I should have put the chocolate croissant in chocolate cake but I kind of wanted to mimic the way the croissant is you know plain dough and the chocolate's just in the middle for the Almond I'm going to mix some almond butter into Italian Maring buttercream I'm going to mix a little Rich buttercream with the Italian Marine buttercream because I need to save enough for the butter croissant cake but I want a richer color and this one's pretty straight up I'm just going to spread almond buttercream now I'm going to place my almond croissant all right so we are at the tiramisu cake for this is this what I planned yeah it is so I've made my coffee concentrate which is just instant coffee with a little bit of hot water so it's really thick and potent and this way you don't add too much liquid to your buttercream and you can make this to taste if you prefer sweeter coffee you could put this into the brown sugar buttercream chocolate cake chisu croissant which has some filling in it and I'm going to make some coffee buttercream because that's my absolute favorite flavor so I want to decorate each cake in a different way kind of like I did my cakes in layer up so this one I'm going to ice and use a cake comb so I'm going to create a striped pattern with a small spatula it's nothing it's it's really um this is like an easy way to decorate a cake without a fancy tool and it creates a nice texture okay pistachio and now I'm going to place the pistachio croissant on top come with me oh I want to eat this now so this is the PE can and I think for this I want to do a swirl pattern it seems appropriate all you have to do is keep redrawing the letter C in different directions into the buttercream peekin croissant and then I'm going to drizzle the top with caramel PE can chocolate doesn't it look so luscious look at that really oh oh okay so comb is going to make a nice pattern this is actually hard because the cake is so small I'm happy just a beauty a beauty and then to finish oh I like that I was going to do a drizzle but I did that with caramel that's so two cakes ago almond I'm not even sure how I want to decorate this but the reason I'm doing this is because I want you all to know know that you can decorate a cake a smooth cake is the hardest cake it looks the simplest but it leaves no room for error so if you add a texture then you can do no wrong and you can just keep doing it until you're happy and then I have sliced almonds I hope I don't wreck it let's see oh no I'm not wrecking so you want to be very light-handed look at that this one looks very different and now I have these like curls ooh now since this is for the plain croissant first of all I'm not going to call it plain butter the butter croissant I am going to ice it as smooth as I can you're not Smo smooth enough okay I'm yelling at my cake I'm going to not that a butter croissant needs anything else but because I put the raspberry jalet inside I want some on top the butter is going to stop the jam from sinking down the whole point is the you know the crisp flakiness on the outside and the soft inside so how else would I demonstrate this okay guys happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there and happy Mother's Day to me cuz now I get to eat six cakes yes m M M M what can I say nothing I'll see you all next week I'm taking this with me\n"