Duff Goldman

Early life

Goldman was born in Detroit, Michigan, to a Jewish family. He moved shortly thereafter to Missouri. Goldman's nickname Duff came about when he was a baby. His toddler brother, Willie Goldman, was unable to pronounce the name and kept saying Duffy. When he was four, his mother caught him in her kitchen wielding a meat cleaver and watching food personality Chef Tell.

After the divorce of his parents when he was ten, Goldman spent time living in both Northern Virginia and in the town of Sandwich on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. In 1992, Goldman attended McLean High School in McLean, Virginia where he played on the Highlanders ice hockey team. In 1993, he graduated from Sandwich High School in Sandwich.

From the age of fourteen, he began to work in kitchens; his first job was at a bagel store at a mall. Goldman has said that when he was a sophomore in college, he went to what he considered the finest restaurant in Baltimore, Charleston, and was inspired to apply as a cook there. The head chef, Cindy Wolf, looked at his résumé and noted that it consisted of irrelevant experience. However, Cindy did offer him a job to make cornbread and biscuits only, and this is what Goldman cites as the turning point in his career.

Shortly after college at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, he attended schools such as Corcoran College of Art and the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in Napa Valley, California. After working under acclaimed chefs in California, including a stagiaire position at the French Laundry and as executive pastry chef of the Vail Cascade Hotel in Colorado, he returned to Washington, D.C., to work at Todd English's Olives restaurant baking bread.

Charm City Cakes

In 2000, Goldman opened his own business called Charm City Cakes. Initially, his cake sales began as he worked out of his house in Charles Village in Baltimore, Maryland with the help of two assistants he employed. As the requests for his unusual cakes increased, he hired more employees – many of whom did not have any culinary experience as pastry chefs, but were instead experienced painters, architects, and sculptors. Charm City Cakes frequently uses blow torches, as well as power tools such as grinders and drills to help create the underlying supports of cakes. With his crew, Goldman has created unusual cakes including the likenesses of Elvis in the form of a 3-foot butter cream sculpture, an anatomically correct ear, a smoking volcano, a three-dimensional German Shepherd, as well as a replica of a CAT scan machine, a Jeep, and an edible Wrigley Field.

Goldman has made cakes for a number of celebrities including a cake for President Obama’s second inaugural ball in 2013, Tom Clancy, the cast of Lost, the 30 Rock cast (along with a cake prop), Sir Roger Moore,. and for Katy Perry's "Birthday" video.

In October 2009, Goldman and his brother Willie released the book Ace of Cakes: Inside the World of Charm City Cakes from HarperCollins/William Morrow, providing an exhaustive look at both the bakery and the show.

TV series

Dessert games 2017-

Personal life

Goldman currently lives in Los Angeles, California. He played bass guitar in an instrumental band called "...soihadto...". He is now the bass player in a band called Foigrock (a play on foie gras and rock and roll). He claims his alternate dream job would be to perform as bass player with the band Clutch. Goldman has made a wedding cake for Clutch's lead singer, Neil Fallon. In addition, Fallon's younger sister and Goldman's friend from college, Mary Alice Fallon-Yeskey, works at Charm City Cakes as the office manager.

Goldman also officially entered the Guinness Book of World Records for baking the world's largest cupcake on March 30, 2008. The massive entirely edible cupcake weighed in at 61.4 pounds (27.9 kg) and was over a foot (305mm) tall. It was reportedly 150 times the size of a regular cupcake and required 16 pounds (7.2 kg) of butter, 10 pounds (4.5 kg) of sugar, and three ounces (85g) of food coloring. The record-breaking pastry was created to support the Great American Bake Sale, which raised $10,000 and awareness for the Share Our Strength charity. However, as reported in a 2009 episode of Ace of Cakes, Goldman was stripped of the record due to the cupcake having been made in two parts.

Duff lost a cooking competition on Iron Chef America season 8, episode 7 against Michael Symon. Goldman also competed on Food Network Challenge and won the competition.

Goldman is Jewish. He is actively involved in Tzedakah, the Jewish practice of performing charity and philanthropic acts to enhance one's spirituality. In an interview with Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, Goldman said “Tzedakah is very important to me. I’ve been so fortunate with everything that has happened to me, it would be a crime not to give back.”