You know Duff Goldman as the guy who can sculpt anything out of cake (Motorcycles! Stadiums! Betty White sitting in an armchair surrounded by dogs!), but what you don't know about the Charm City Cakes owner—and guest chef on NBC's Food Fighters, premiering July 2 at 8 p.m. ET—will surprise you even more than his larger-than-life creations.
1. He probably wouldn't be on TV today if he didn't agree to fight off ninjas for a live stage show called F*ck You, Let's Bake.
"It was not at all what a regular, stand-and-stir cooking show was like," Goldman says. "We had ninjas try to fight me while I was cooking, we'd break out into song...It was very much in the vein of Monty-Python-meets-Adam-Sandler."
A friend owned a theater in Baltimore, and suggested the idea, since Goldman was fresh out of culinary school. Another friend taped it and sent the footage to Goldman's brother, who was a producer on ER.
"My brother saw it and was like, 'wow, you're actually a good entertainer,'" which led to them creating a demo reel, shopping it around, and eventually landing on Food Network.
2. He was in an emo band called Two-Day Romance—and it almost changed the course of his entire life.
Goldman played bass guitar, and just as the band started to pick up steam, doing shows for Sony and a showcase with Linkin Park, he was asked to audition for another band in Seattle. "I tried out, and it went well, but they decided to go with somebody else," he explains. "So I went back to Baltimore and opened a bakery instead."
3. Ace of Cakes—and to some degree, Charm City Cakes—was actually a side project.
Owning his own bakery gave Goldman the flexibility to tour with his band, making cakes (and earning extra cash) when he wasn't on the road. "That's the way the bakery was built—it was a bunch of dudes in rock and jazz bands who wanted to pursue a rock career," he says. "We weren't trying to be good on television; we were trying to be good in bands."
4. The current soundtrack to his life is a toss-up between two songs: Led Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks" and Katy Perry's "Firework."
Why Led Zeppelin: "That boom, pow, big drum beat sounds like me in a nutshell—it's how I approach life. I barrel into it and see what happens, and generally speaking, it turns out okay."
Why Katy Perry: "'Firework' is about digging deep into yourself and going, 'listen, man, whatever I've chosen to do, that's what I've chosen, and I'm going to be the best at it.'"
5. His resume includes both McDonald's and the French Laundry.
When he interviewed for his first job in fine dining, he scoffed when the owner said he didn't know how to cook. "I was like, 'What do you mean? I can make 12 Big Macs in a minute!'" Goldman jokes.
6. He grew up in a town called Sandwich.
So basically, he was born to be in the food business.
7. He made all of the cakes for Katy Perry's "Birthday" lyric video.
"It was cool hearing the director's vision and helping figure out how to make it happen, like, 'oh, the grease is going to leech out of the butter, so let me do that in royal icing instead of buttercream,'" says Goldman, whose team made "a lot of cakes" for the shoot. (The video features every line of the scrawled across desserts.)
8. He spent two years of his life baking cornbread biscuits every day at a restaurant called Savannah—and it taught him a crucial baking trick.
"After cleaning the pans, I'd grease them and let them sit overnight," he says. "The biscuits wouldn't stick at all, and they'd come out beautiful and even every time."
9. He was part of a gang at Savannah. Well, sort of.
"We'd go out after work and get a beer, and we'd keep our chef's coats on. It was a point of pride. People would be like, 'Oh, sh*t—they're those cooks from Savannah. They're badass.'"
10. He considers hijinks absolutely critical in the workplace.
"They're really important for morale," Goldman says. "If everyone's freaked out and scared of the chef, you're not going to make good food. I wanted to make Charm City a very fun environment; I wanted people who were goofy and colorful, who could put that energy into their decorating."
11. The cake he's most proud of making is his executive sous chef's brother's wedding cake.
"They wanted a cake that looks like Gustav Klimt made it—not a copy of The Kiss or anything, but a cake that looked like the artist himself did it. I really had to do my research," Goldman explains. "I learned so much from inhabiting another artist's mind."
He likens it to picking up any new skill: "You start copying someone else's voice; you have to learn how to speak, then you can start to have original thoughts and convey them."
12. He knows you have to crack a few eggs to make a good show.
At the end of each F*ck You, Let's Bake performance, Goldman would put on a gas mask and stand against a wall for the "Circle of Death," where audience members were handed raw eggs and hurled them at him. "It was a little scary at first," he admits.
Follow Delish on Instagram.
