Can you think of a better way to celebrate than digging in to a big slice of birthday cake? Meet some chefs who make CRAZY cakes that are out of this world!

“I’ve always been the cake guy. Everywhere I worked, I was always the cake guy,” says Jeffrey “Duff” Goldman.

You may recognize him as the “Ace of Cakes” or Chef Duff of Charm City Cakes in Baltimore. His fantastic cake creations take outrageous forms and spark imaginations. But fame came as a surprise to a guy who doesn’t watch television.

“I wasn’t even looking for it. They (Food Network producers) kind of found me,” he explains. “They were just like, ‘Hey, there’s this guy and he does these crazy things, and he’s kind of a goofball.’” He became a regular on the network’s Challenge shows, even though he didn’t have much success.

“I was always losing, but I didn’t mind because I was learning so much awesome stuff,” says Duff. “I was learning stuff I would never learn in a classroom.”

Duff kept accepting challenges—he saw it as an opportunity to learn from the people he competed against, and he says his light-hearted approach provided “comedic relief” in the sometimes stress-filled, serious competitions. Still, it was a shock when the folks at Food Network asked him about doing his own show.

“I was like, ‘What? A TV show! Like, about what?”” he says. He told producers he’d do the show “if you think someone’s going to watch it.”

Turns out, a lot of people watch, and now Duff is recognized everywhere.

“It gets a little OVERWHELMING sometimes,” he says. But he also gets a kick out of it. “It’s fun, when you go to an airport and you get a group of kids that get really excited when they see you. There’s nothing better than that.”

Fame Takes the Cake

Duff still laughs about his first experience with TV fame. He was driving overnight to a competition, and he stopped at a gas station in a small town in Virginia. The guy behind the counter kept staring at him.

“What’s this guy looking at, what’s his problem. I’m just trying to get potato chips and a bottle of water,” Duff thought. Then he heard this question for the first time: “Are you that guy on the Food Network?”

“It was hilarious, it was really, really funny,” he says of his first fan encounter—at a gas station in the middle of nowhere at 3 in the morning. The clerk even called his wife and woke her up to talk on the phone with Duff. “It was really cool. I was so weirded out (that) people actually recognize me.”

Duff thinks of his staff at Charm City Cakes as a team, and these days he gets to be the coach. “Teamwork is huge. To do what we do here, we gotta work together, we gotta love each other,” he says. “We’re in one big room, we’re all together all the time.”

Duff says that playing sports made him the person he is today. “(It’s about) learning how to win, and learning how to lose,” he says. “Learning how to be on a team and learning how to do my job.”

Duff is inspired by the “wow” factor he can infuse into a cake, and the happiness it brings people. As a kid, he remembers getting a cake shaped like a snowy owl. He was in a group called Indian Guides, and his Native American name was Snowy Owl. He knew this cake was made just for him.

“I try to make sure that all of our customers get that same feeling of ‘Wow!’” explains Duff. “More than anything else, it’s really seeing the ‘wow’ on people’s faces when they see the work that you do.”

Duff says some of the wildest cakes he has created include the Red Squig from the game Warhammer (on this page) and a replica of Hogwarts.

“I’m a really, really, really big Harry Potter fan,” he says, so he was thrilled to deliver the Hogwarts cake. “There’s Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint and we were like, ‘Whoa, it’s Harry and Ron.’ We were freaking out we were so excited. It was amazing.”

Duff remembers that Bonnie Wright (Ginny Weasley) is really tall, and Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) is actually quite nice. He says the entire Harry Potter cast was really cool, as were Steve Carell and Jack Black. He met them when his team made cakes for the premieres of “Get Smart” and “Kung Fu Panda.”

“You know how you really want certain celebrities just to be cool?” he asks. These folks are, says Duff.

Guess what? Duff is just as cool as you would want him to be, too!

What’s Cooking in AZ!

Kids celebrating birthdays in Arizona are definitely outside the delivery area of Charm City Cakes. There are great local chefs around, though, if you can afford to open your pocketbook for a priceless personalized pastry. You might see some of these cake wizards on TV, too!

Andrea Carusetta of Sedona Cake Couture has been baking professionally for 15 years. In 2008, she took on her first Food Network Challenge. She has two silver medals from Challenge competitions, and you can see how she does on “Food Network Challenge: Anniversaries,” which will air this month or next (check local listings).

Carusetta says the wildest cake she has created resembled a VINTAGE urn. “It was 3 feet tall, shaped like an urn and covered with a gazillion sugar flowers,” she says. It had hand painted flowers (in food coloring) on the front, too.

Another outrageous cake she made was 7 feet tall! Carusetta can’t reveal details about the cake, beyond its stupendous stature, because she made it for TLC’s “Ultimate Cake Off” scheduled to air Feb. 1.

For the anniversaries challenge, Carusetta asked a veteran cake maker from Phoenix to assist her—Barbara Gardner of Let Them Eat Cake. Gardner has been making special occasion cakes for over 30 years.

Gardner says some of her more memorable creations include a longhorn with wired, rice crispy-covered horns and a huge haunted house, complete with chocolate headstones for all the guests and treasure-filled caskets for the birthday twins. Gardner also had a big thrill making a life-sized gorilla cake for the Phoenix Suns Gorilla!

In Tucson, Mindy Illes of Cake Boutique has baked and decorated all sorts of animals and cars, and even a can of Spam. Illes says one off-the-wall cake was in the shape of a brain for a local doctor.

Illes recommends that people making a birthday cake at home should “just have fun with it, just give it a try. Don’t be afraid of it. Even have the kids help.”

Carusetta says home chefs and kids can have a lot of fun with colored fondant, which you can buy in the cake decorating section of a craft store like Michael’s. She explains that you can roll out the fondant like a pie crust and then use cutters to make shapes. Stick the cutouts all over cake!

“It’s easy and pretty—my 3-year-old granddaughter does it,” says Carusetta. “Get alphabet cutters and cut out the kid’s name. They love that—now it’s personalized.” Gardner advises the home cake maker to plan ahead and pay attention to detail. Really look at the other decorations and coordinate your cake—match the colors or the designs, like the stripes or polka dots behind the character featured on the party plates.

The recipient will think, “‘Wow, you took the time to match it to my plates or napkins or my invitations.’ I think that’s what makes it special,” says Gardner.

Still Need More Cake?

• Cakes were baked by the ancient Egyptians. The ancient Greeks and Romans were the first to eat cakes to celebrate special birthdays. These ancient cakes were sweetened with honey and were more like bread than like our cakes today.
• The word cake appeared in the 13th century. It derived from the Old Norse word “kaka.”
• Gateau is the French word for cake. A gateau often has fresh decorations that do not keep for long—so eat it quickly!
• Torte is the German word for cake. Pastel de cumpleaños or la torta de cumpleaños is birthday cake in Spanish.
• A superstition in Medieval times warned that if a cake fell while baking, it was a bad omen and meant bad luck for the coming year.

Check out some awesome cakes at

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