Duff Goldman: From Meat Cleaver to Culinary King

Pastry chef Duff Goldman may never have actually said, “Let them eat cake,” but he’s built a life around doing just that. Renowned for his innovative creations at his Charm City Cakes in Baltimore, MD, Chef Goldman is one of the most sought-after cake makers in the country. He has starred in a host of Food Network series, beginning with a 10-year run with Ace of Cakes, moving on to competition-themed Duff to Dawn and, for the under-18 crowd, Kids Baking Championships.

Early Influences and Culinary Education

Chef Goldman has been cooking since the age of four, when his mom caught him in the kitchen watching Chef Tell and swinging around a meat cleaver. LaWanda Toney: And I'm LaWanda Toney, and we're your co-hosts. Helen Westmoreland: And we have a super special guest today, Duff Goldman is here. The incredible celebrity chef and star of multiple shows, and we are excited to talk to him about all things, food and family. Inspired to bake as a child by his Ukrainian great-grandmother, “Mamo,” the Detroit-born Goldman was as interested in art as he was in cooking.

Chef Goldman started his professional foodservice career when he was 14, and has been working in kitchens and bakeshops ever since. He studied at the University of Maryland and Corcoran College of Art as well as at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone, in California. After graduating, Chef Goldman left Baltimore to earn his baking and pastry arts certificate from the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in California’s Napa Valley.

Mentorship and Experience

After his young start at cooking with a meat cleaver and a television show, Duff studied under Chef Cindy Wolf in Baltimore. He started working for acclaimed Chef Cindy Wolf at Savannah restaurant while attending the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. While in California, Duff worked under Chef Steven Durfee, a widely known pastry chef. While in Napa, he was a stagiere at The French Laundry, working under celebrated pastry chef Stephen Durfee. Chef Goldman left California to become executive pastry chef at the Vail Cascade Hotel and Resort in Vail, CO, and worked under Executive Chef Steve Mannino ’95 in Washington, DC.

Charm City Cakes and Entrepreneurial Ventures

In 2000, Duff returned to Baltimore to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams. Chef Goldman came full circle in 2000 when he returned to Baltimore to open his own business, Charm City Cakes. The first location opened in Baltimore (a.k.a. the Charm City), in 2002 and a second location in Harbor East in 2017. Known for its out-of-the-ordinary creations inspired by just about anything, Charm City Cakes offers special-occasion cakes made to order, each taking anywhere from 10 to 200 hours to complete. His crew consists not only of great bakers but also non-cooking types who know how to work with moving parts, smoke machines, and building materials. “Hijinks are really important for morale,” Goldman has said of the way his team works. “If everyone’s freaked out and scared of the chef, you’re not going to make good food.

Chef Goldman expanded in 2011 to the west coast opening Charm City Cakes West in Los Angeles. The following year he opened Duffs Cakemix Bakery & Studio, a do-it-yourself cake and cupcake decorating studio where the customer is the artist. Cakemix is located right next to Charm City Cakes. In 2018, locations opened in Pasadena and Tarzana, CA. “I want a Cakemix in every city,” Chef Goldman says. “Honestly, any direction I go in, it’s going to be empowering people to bring out their inner artist.”

Television Career and Media Appearances

For 10 seasons, Chef Goldman brought his unique style of baking to a national television audience as the host of the hit Food Network show, Ace of Cakes. Before long, the recognition-as well as the cake orders-started pouring in. He is the host of Sugar High, Kids Baking Championship, Halloween Baking Championship, Halloween Cake-Off, Holiday Baking Championship, Spring Baking Championship, Duff Till Dawn, Duff Takes the Cake, Cake Masters, Dessert Games, and Worst Bakers in America. His new program, Buddy vs. Duff, debuted in March 2019, and pits Chef Goldman against Cake Boss Buddy Valastro for the ultimate bragging rights as undisputed king of cakes. Chef Goldman has been featured on Food Network Challenge, Iron Chef America, Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, Oprah, Jimmy Kimmel, The Chew, Rachael Ray, and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. More recently, Duff stars in the discovery plus original series, Duff's Happy Fun Bake Time, which premiered last spring.

Author and Personal Life

In 2009, he and his brother Willie Goldman authored Ace of Cakes: Inside the World of Charm City Cakes. In November 2015, Chef Goldman released his cookbook, Duff Bakes: Think and Bake Like a Pro at Homes, which includes 135 recipes for a diverse range of goodies including nutter butter cookies, apple streusel muffins, bacon jalapeno biscuits, and zucchini lemon cake. A two-time James Beard Foundation nominated chef, Goldman is a sculptor, artist, and musician who play bass in the rock band Soihadto. On January 19, 2019, Chef Goldman married Johnna Colbry at the Museum of Natural History in Los Angeles, underneath the skeleton of a T. Rex. Duff also became a father in January 2021. Congratulations, Duff first and foremost.

Duff's Culinary Philosophy and Advice

As a chef-entrepreneur and cooking show judge, Goldman knows that a beautiful presentation may dazzle - until someone grabs a fork and digs in. He told Food Network about a cooking school disaster that happened while he was baking bread for an American Culinary Federation (ACF) conference. "I baked all this beautiful bread, all these different shapes, and really, really cool stuff. I was showing off a little bit, but I'm a chef - we like to do that," says Goldman. But when his instructor tasted the bread, Goldman realized his mistake.

Goldman also advises that you find your passion and do what you love. Goldman was featured in an article in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal where he offered this advice: "Don't try to get straight A's. It doesn't matter. If you understand what you are doing, you'll get straight A's anyway.

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Teaching Children About Cooking and Science

Duff has recently starred in several new shows on the Food Network, including Cake Masters, the Baking Championship Series, Dessert Games, Buddy versus Duff and Duff takes the cake.

Duff Goldman: You know, it's interesting. I was trying to figure out a way, when I'm judging the baking championship shows, right. I talk about like, your cake is chewy because you over mixed the batter, when you over mix the batter it strengthens the protein. And, I go into the science of baking when I'm judging. And I was like, you know, I wonder if there's a way that I could make this accessible for more people. And so, I was in my apartment, one day and I was cooking and I was watching Sesame street and I was like, I bet you could do like a puppet show. I was like, Hey, I got this idea. And they were like, yeah, we love it. So we went for it and we made like a whole puppet show that, it has recipes, there's real cooking. And we make a lot of good food on there, but it's really about, explaining the science of what happens.

One of my favorite parts in the series is when we're explaining flavor and how flavor works. I was likening flavor to a rock band. And so, then I put on a outfit - it was just like a pink blob. And so I was a taste bud. And then I played each one of the instruments and they film me in different spots in this huge studio. Then they put it all together. So as I'm explaining the different flavors that you taste, a spotlight would come on and light up that Duff that was playing whatever. And then at the end, I was like, you build flavor like this, and then the whole band is playing, and that's where you get, like, the salty is working with the bitter is working with the sour, is working with the sweet.

LaWanda Toney: Yeah, I love that. I don't think my full band plays when I cook, I'm not sure about that. Okay. It's the same thing with flavor. Like when you taste something, you can be like, you know, what's missing here and you sort of run through your catalog. Like, does it need more salt? No. Does it need some lemon juice or vinegar? No, does need a little sugar?

Duff Goldman: Yeah. And there's chemistry involved, there's physics involved, you know, obviously there's math involved, there's a lot of different disciplines are involved. A lot of times when you're baking it's geometry. You gotta figure out angles and stuff sometimes. I think that, cooking should almost be a STEM subject, because it really, takes a bunch of different disciplines and gives them a real world application and understanding, some rudimentary chemistry really helps you in the kitchen. It helps you cooking helps you baking. It helps you cleaning there's like real sort of applications here, and I think that's, what's so cool about it. And I think that's why kids can like really understand it because it's not just an abstract concept. The concept of air pressure, when you're talking about, a cake rising, and then you're explaining how air pressure affects that. And if you're baking a cake in Vail, Colorado at 10,000 feet, there's less air pressure. 'Cause there's less air on top of that cake pushing down. And so you can use less baking soda and less baking powder, because you want your cake to rise a certain amount and when you can explain it in a way that totally makes sense and kids like, oh, okay, I get it. Air pressure, got it.

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Duff Goldman: Well, Josephine's going to be pretty amazing. Like, I'm expecting, she's gonna be making, you know, five course meals by the time she's six years old.

Duff Goldman: There's a little pressure. There's a little pressure. She better be good. When they have a bake sale at school, she better bring it. I would say like one of the fun things you can do is just like, when you're starting with flavor. And be like, okay, like say you're going to make some chicken. Take a chicken breast, cut it in to like four pieces and then, let your kids be like, okay, this is salt and pepper. This is cumin. This is, pepper flakes and then this'll be like paprika and onion and garlic, and then like let them flavor, let them do it. Grill them all and then, keep the spices out that you use, so they're there. And put each chicken and be like, here, it tastes a different. This one taste totally different than this one, that way they can kind of start to figure, okay, so like this one makes the chicken taste like this, this one didn't make the chicken taste like this, and then they can understand, spices and, you know, kind of how they work.

Independence and Learning Through Experimentation

Duff Goldman: I think it really depends on the kid, but I think like six or seven - once they understand the oven is like, you know how to turn it on, how to turn it off, how to be safe, where the fire extinguisher is and how to use it. If you've done it with them a few times and you can see, okay, they use the towel to get the, you know, the pan out so they don't burn themselves, all those things. With some supervision, six or seven is a pretty good age where they can really, you know, start, like they can operate the mixer. You know, see that spoon gets kind of dinged up and like, so they can really see like, yeah, that's dangerous. I don't want my hand to go in there. I think once they understand that, I think they're okay.

Duff Goldman: I think the thing is, there's no knowledge like empirical knowledge. Somebody can explain to you a thousand times how to change a tire, but until you do it, you just don't get it. And I think let them figure it out. Let him screw it up, let her make a mistake. let her make a lot of mistakes, you know mistakes are, building blocks, it's how we grow and how we get better. But I think beyond the practical, like learn how to do something right by doing it wrong, a bunch of times, there's the more abstract idea of like giving kids an opportunity to accomplish something. And I think that when you can give someone a sense of accomplishment, it's like a self replicating virus. When a kid realizes like, oh, wait a minute, an hour ago, I had never decorated a cake before, and now I've decorated this cake and look at this thing, it's pretty good. What else can I do? Maybe I can paint a picture, maybe I can write a computer program. When you give a kid a true sense of accomplishment, not just a trophy for showing up like a real, like I did, you made, I made a thing and it's good and I'm proud of it. And now I know that feeling that I'm having right now, I know I can get it. And where else can I get it?

From McDonald's to Culinary School

Duff Goldman: So when I was 14 and a half that was when you can legally work. And I got a job at McDonald's and that was my first job was at McDonalds I can make 12 big Macs in a minute. And so I, I got in there and like, I loved it for the first. I just love McDonald's.

Goldman's resume includes jobs at higher-end restaurants, but he believes that working at McDonald's and other fast food chains taught him how to run a kitchen, why uniforms need to be presentable, and the importance of product consistency. He learned humility in the higher-end restaurants too. After culinary school, Goldman got a job at Charleston restaurant in Baltimore.

Giving Back and Inspiring Creativity

Goldman says his Jewish upbringing taught him the value of giving back. He is involved with many charitable organizations, including No Kid Hungry, Make a Wish, and Save a Child's Heart.

Goldman suggests being creative and adventurous. "I really like to make people smile, make them laugh, or make them think," Goldman told students at the Institute of Culinary Education. "I always want to put something surprising in there." That is evident from his creativity in making cakes with sound, fog, or motorized moving components like the working roller coaster cake. "It's a cake shop," he says.

Duff Goldman’s slogan is simple: If you can dream it, we can create it. Whether it’s a lifelike Betty White cake or a multi-tiered, hand-painted wedding cake (with or without lasers), the pastry chef and owner of the Baltimore-based, wildly popular Charm City Cakes bakery and star of Food Network’s Ace of Cakes is up for any confectionary challenge.

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