Duff Goldman: Meaningful Cakes for Beautiful Celebrations

Cakes signify special occasions! Whether it’s a wedding, a b’nai mitzvah, or something else, you want to have a cake that you – and your guests – love! 

The secret to a great cake? 

“Keep it simple, make it good, and make it beautiful,” says Duff Goldman, chef, New York Times bestselling author, artist, and entrepreneur. Duff is the owner of the successful bakery, Charm City Cakes, and founder of Duff’s Cakemix; his cakes are available nationwide on Goldbelly. 

Although we live in a DIY world, when you are planning a celebration, especially a wedding, Duff says, it’s best to let someone else bake your cake. 

“You just have too many other things to do,” he says. “Wedding cakes are very labor intensive; they take a lot of time [and] mental space.“ 

Taste, Duff believes, is the most important aspect of any cake. 

“No matter how beautiful it is, they’re gonna serve it,” Duff says. “When they serve it and all your guests eat it, [if] this cake is garbage, that’s what they’re gonna remember.” 

He adds,” It’s not more expensive to make a cake delicious. And it’s not more difficult to make a cake delicious. So you might as well get a delicious cake.” 

Duff suggests keeping the flavor simple. That way your cake appeals to everybody. You can have a chocolate cake, red velvet, lemon poppy, whatever you want. For instance, if you order a lemon poppy cake from Duff, you get white buttercream and lemon curd on the inside. 

And don’t get too creative! If you order a lemon poppy cake with a blackberry filling and cinnamon frosting, “You don’t even know what you’re eating at that point,” Duff says. 

Simplicity doesn’t just apply to taste. The decoration should be beautiful, classy, and look good in photographs. 

“Don’t try to tell your life story with your wedding cake,” Duff says. “I think that’s a mistake a lot of people make. If your cake needs a legend for everybody looking at it to be able to figure out what it is, then it’s too complicated.” 

For example, if the happy couple is into Death Metal, they could get a black cake with chrome on it. But don’t put a ticket stub from every metal concert you’ve ever been to on it. 

“Nobody’s gonna take the time to read all those ticket stubs,” he says. “And you waste a lot of money paying me to make all those ticket stubs.” 

While there are a lot of things that are possible with cake – Duff can make them move, shoot lasers, etc – if you try to say too much with a cake, if you try to tell your life story, things get lost in translation. 

People want to make the cake look like a giant mountain, for instance. 

They’ll say, “‘We’ll have this winding path throughout the mountain and this is where the paths will come together. Before that, I had an orange cat, named Whiskers, and he had his 1986 Toyota Camry with the dent in the hood.” 

When you try to tell this story with all these little things, it ends up looking like a diorama. And Duff believes it’s never as effective as people want. 

“The cake on the inside is still good, but you’ve got to cut through all that,” he says. “If his 1986 Toyota Camry with a dent in it is that important, we just make a big version of that. People see it. They remember it. They know exactly what it is.” 

Take one of two things and make them big. “You could do your 86 Camry with Whiskers sitting on top of it or like sticking his head out the sunroof or something,” says Duff, who has made cakes in the shape of vehicles, planes, boats, and fish. 

“We do a lot more traditional tiered cakes than we do 86 Toyota Camrys with a dent,” he adds. “Some people want a nine-tier white, beautiful wedding cake with flowers on it. Some people want a Sasquatch. It’s just who you are and what do you want to remember in 20 years when you’re looking at pictures.” 

Duff and his team have made cakes in the shape of The Wall; he’s made a Matzo Ball Soup cake. They do Torahs, too. 

“A lot of times people will get a photograph of the Torah that’s at their synagogue,” he adds. “Sometimes we’ll do The Ark, too.” 

With Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, people are getting more personal too. “If she rides horses, maybe we’ll do a horse,” he says. 

“If he plays ice hockey, we’ll do skates. It’s not just Torah sheet cakes anymore.” 

One thing Duff has noticed recently is kids putting the charitable component of their Bar or Bat Mitzvah into their cake.

“They’ll tie the cake into whatever it is they’re doing, be it Habitat for Humanity or No Kid Hungry or Make a Wish, or whatever it is,” he said. 

The cake is such a focal point that it’s a chance for them to hit home with their fundraising. 

He adds, “The fact that there’s more and more tzedakah components of Bar or Bat Mitzvahs gives me hope for the future.” 

While Duff recommends people find a cake baker for any celebration, if you plan to bake your own B’nai Mitzvah cake, he says the first thing is to find a cake that you like.

“If it’s a box cake mix, use it; it’s delicious,” he says. 

“If you want to make it from scratch, do that. Again, it’s really personal preference. “If you’re gonna do it yourself, I would say, make it [an event]. Maybe invite four or five of your friends over, and you can all decorate your Bar or Bat Mitzvah cake together.” 

When you go to a cake baker, Duff says it’s important to come with ideas. 

“Come with pictures that you found online or sketches or just a general direction of where to go,” he says. 

They don’t know you, who you are, and what you are into. You need to tell them. 

“Give them an idea of what you want your cake to look like,” he suggests. “As opposed to saying, ‘My name is Rebecca. I really like horses and “Ham – ilton.” Go.’ Then it’s like, ‘What are we doing here? Do you want Lin Manuel Miranda riding a horse?’” 

It doesn’t need to be fully realized, but a starting point. 

“Just having a general direction that you know you want to go in will save everybody time,” Duff says. “Ultimately you’ll get a cake that you want as opposed to somebody else’s vision.”