I made my 2 year old daughter a Michael Bolton Cake

My 2 year old Rebel girl is turning 2 1/2 in a few weeks, and since she is going to be my only babe, we DO celebrate everything, including half birthdays. I plan on making her a half of a birthday cake. ♥

It just so happens that she and I were supposed to have the same birthday (June 12th), but I was induced early so her birthday is June 1st. She turned 2 this year, and I turned FORTY!!!!!! This was her ^^^^^ on the day of her birthday party. She and her friends made fruit loop necklaces, played in her new playhouse we bought her for her birthday gift, and had a dance party to….Michael Bolton.

Yes. You read it right. My 2 year old daughter adores Michael Bolton. People ask how, or why. All I can say is I turned his music on one day as a silly serenade to my husband, and Rebel fell in love. She is a complete fan girl of the old school, 90s Michael Bolton. She always yells, “Bolton! Bolton” and dances in circles to him all over the living room.

I knew the cake that I had to make for Rebel’s 2nd birthday. I didn’t know how I was going to pull it off, but it had to be a “Bolton” cake. It just had to. I had to see her fan girl it out when we brought out her cake. My first idea was to make a photo cake, because I wanted Rebel to recognize who it was right away. I took a photo of Michael Bolton to Wal-Mart’s bakery and asked if they’d print him using their edible ink printer. They refused. They didn’t want to get in trouble with copyright laws. My heart was broken. It was the week of her birthday. I stood in Wal-Mart begging the bakery workers, telling them that this was only a cake for a 2 year old and that I wasn’t making money on it. I stood in the store crying for a little bit, because I had no idea how else to put a recognizable Michael Bolton on a cake. I’d made so many cakes and cupcakes for other peoples’ special orders in the past, but this one was going to be the most special, because it was for my daughter. And out of all the cakes I could make happen, I wasn’t sure I could make this one happen. For a moment, I felt like a failure.

But I decided I was not going to give up. I was going to make a Michael Bolton cake better than any Wal-Mart bakery could print up on an edible image.

So I took out the photo of Michael Bolton, traced him on wax paper, flipped the wax paper upside down onto a cutting board and started to trace him with different colors of frosting onto the wax paper. I froze the sheet of wax paper. While the picture of Michael Bolton was freezing, I frosted Rebel’s cake (her favorite two flavors – peanut butter and banana). I was taking a very big risk. I was thinking this traced buttercream photo of Michael Bolton may have turned out kind of like the end pieces you see on the show “Nailed It.”

But OH MY GOODNESS. I flipped it over onto the cake…and it actually looked like 90s Michael Bolton. I swirled more of his epic 90s hair on top with extra frosting, and added a little gold dragee as his earring. I sprinkled some sparkles on his white suit, and painted edible gold luster dust on top of his belt buckle. Even though I wanted Rebel to see her cake for the first time on her birthday, I had to test it out. I showed Rebel the image and asked her who this was. And she squealed, “BOLTON CAKE!!!!” I passed the test. I had made my daughter a Bolton cake. And it truly was better than any edible image. It was handmade, literally with my love, sweat, and mommy tears ♥.

We did send a letter to Michael Bolton, with all of these pictures proclaiming Rebel’s love for him. We heard back from his secretary telling us that she forwarded all of this adorable-ness to his email. We kept hoping maybe we’d hear back from him, in person or just get an autographed letter or something, but we haven’t yet. A half a year later, Rebel still asks for “Bolton!” and we have amazing Bolton dance parties in our living room. In fact, we had one last night.

The moral to this story is, never give up on your dreams and your vision. No matter how wild they are! Especially when these wild dreams involve somebody that you love more than anything in the whole world. I hope that one day Rebel is going to look at these photos and laugh at how over the top her mom was. But she’s also going to see how much she’s always been fiercely loved.