DUFF GOLDMAN: A BUCKET FULL OF FUNDANT

I am having a devil’s food of a time coming up with anything even scantly clever to say after meeting Duff Goldman, and getting to spend some time inside his Emerald Charm City (CHARM CITY CAKES). My faithful pastry bag of metaphor is just plain clogged.

I could care less about cake—eating it, that is; it’s well-documented I am a savory kind of girl—but squint-grin-and a few strokes with his #10 offset spatula, and I find myself crumb-coated into a state of sweet, ravenous interest--and an uncharacteristic dearth of words--by The Ace of Cakes himself.

A staggering assortment of talented people are coming together across this city to birth a new, out-of-box breast cancer event grown right here, a giant give-back to address Baltimore’s own patient-needs. When I was asked to be a creative consult and advisory board member on this delicious vision to pull together MICA, The PEABODY INSTITUTE, BSO, the AMERICAN VISIONARY ARTS MUSEUM--and now Charm City Cakes--to build this novel confection of art, entertainment and fashion, I could see it: this is an event which needs a spectacular cake—or eleven (yep, Duff said eleven).

I had no idea what to expect from an initial visit to CCC, and never thought for a second that a cryptic “meeting with the design team” meant he’d actually be there, but sure enough, the big wooden doors in the stone building-face opened (very Scooby-Doo and the case of the Creepy Castle), and poof! Duff appeared.

I am a lover of things used outside their original purposes, working on the theory of The Right Tool for the Unexpected Job— and this is the place. I respect anything made to yield to or forcing you to yield to a new possibility, a new view—the one you fall happily ass-backwards into, like cake batter, its sudden knowledge closing over you as you disappear down in it like a spatula-head. Always, I am after that ineffable, fascinating ingredient which changes the whole nature of the dish, that surprise filling--and Duff is that embodiment.

Though I am food-centric, it is my 4-year-old Sylph who adores & knows more about this man than I do, having been granted the uber-cool preschool permission of staying up to watch the 9 pm premiere of Duff’s Chefography. You see, Charm City Cakes is part of the village it takes to raise my child. “But why not, Mommy? [arms over chest, stamp] Hmmmf—Mary Alice chews gum and she is much cooler than YOU.” “But why can’t we use the Sawzall? Duff loves the 'resiplickating saw.” “Mommy, what’s graffiti? [Vespa wheels turning], because it looks like a really good job for me.” And my all-time favorite quote from an emergent reader: “Why does Gee-off talk so slllooooowly? Duff is a fast-talker.”

Not just a fast-talker—a springform-launched, self-confessed ping-pong ball. “I’m like a ping-pong ball whizzing around the room. Zewp! Zip!” I’m going to say he’s more like 70, graffiti-covered ping-pong balls thwacking you in the forehead in quick succession, and as annoying as that could be, it’s reeealllllly fun to be around.

(Fondant Tube explanation by Duff, shoes by Rocket Dog)
In addition to vices and secret pasts, we all have a super-hero persona—and yes, his is “Bad-Ass Baker.” But that is one layer, which leaves at least six, subtle, Clark Kent layers. Without revealing Duff’s soft pudding center, I will give you two: #4:Philosopher, and #7:Shoe fanatic.
#7 is fortuitous, because the particular event is a shoe metaphor from every angle, from walking the Project Runway-esque survivor show, to the individually interpreted auctionable shoes, to the formal-wear with sneakers attire. Though Duff claims Docs push the soles of his dressiness-quotient, he has a bazillion pairs of athletic shoes of every make and model--almost.

As a 12 year-old boy in thinly-iced disguise, he desperately needs to add to a pair of Heelys to this collection—rue the fact the line maxes out at size 8 ½. Um, am I the only person who thinks he’s a shoe-in (ugh) to sponsor DUFFS shoes?

My tiers toppled when Duff gave me free reign to take pictures, as long as I steered clear of any licensed characters or monikers, or anything, um…marginal. (You do the recipe math: Pack thousands of square feet full of creative people and fondant. Some people might make body parts to amuse themselves. They might.) My brain is on fire with creative love: I miss teaching Kindergarten; this looks like my old classroom spewed through a rickety Spin Art—only much cleaner, in fact pristine, fastidious. Ranks of ribbon, jute, stickers of all sizes, gobs of color, color, color. Tubs of fondant, airbrush guns, miles of clean, cool silver rack. There’s something I Love Lucy meets surgical suite meets Heart of Darkness meets life-size Play-doh Fun Factory here.

The implied soundtrack is Orff jangled with Primus and an overlaying track of 1982’s Q-bert, and Duff shares it all, stopping our tour with a pensive goatee-fondle, contemplating various boggling phenomena: How do we teach Empathy? What is Celebrity? What is the meaning of Paula’s Party? (He recently filmed an episode of PP: the guests were Dionne Warwick, Clay Aiken, and himself. What the Duff!? What did they eat? What did they talk about? That had to be some crazy kind of graffiti-covered, butter-filled ten gallon hat worn by a Solid Gold dancer of a party.

Brains sufficiently hyper-stimulated, we returned to the drawing table, and I was prodded into sharing the creative on the cake-design concept from the event-end. It doesn’t take a rock-candy scientist to see the irony in pitching a creative idea to Duff, right? But I am telling you: it took mere seconds for the Food Network, The Ace of Cakes factor, to curl away in a Harry Potter-esque dry ice reaction, and he was encouraging my windmill hand-gestures with a generous rolling boil of enthusiasm:

Me, feeling insecure: “Are you sure this is okay?”
Duff, genuinely collaborative: “No, dude, go GO!”

Because Duff Goldman’s appeal and accessibility is exactly the same as if he were head fry cook (if said fry cook were a witty, dry, philosopher-cum-creative madman, with an infectious cackle). Of course, his take on the original design goes to eleven.

Most visually satisfying things in life have stark trade-offs. Ever seen a room full of people eating (non-Charm-ing, surely) black frosting? If it’s aesthetically spot-on, it’s almost guaranteed to taste horrible, metallic, turn everyone involved into tar-mouthed fiends, like poor, unsuspecting Francis falling for the trick piece of gum in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. Well, I couldn’t find the trade-off in Duff—and I’m always poised to find it. For those of you maddeningly literal types, this means that yes, the cake is really good: I barely got a couple of fingers in the box without losing a digit to toddlers, swiping a few test-crumbs of blueberry with lemon curd. And yes, it was not just good it was divine. For those of you who enjoy the moistness of metaphor, the cake is really good. These things they’re creating at CCC look awesome (Duff uses the word awesome a lot, and on him it is flat-out endearing), and there is really delicious cake under there you can sink your teeth into.

You’d think it would be natural for me to turn meeting him into my typical Hoarfrostian licked-beater allegory, but Duff is testing my deeper layers here. Like a cake-skewer to my core—he went in deftly and came out surprisingly clean. Surely you’ve guessed, dear reader, that according to the super-hero theory, even I, notorious Meat Mistress of Metaphor, can’t lasciviously eat steak 24/7, that despite turning my beleaguered past and neuroses into fun-food-fodder on this blog, the only “barstool” I’ve recently perched on has been an 18-inch Little Tikes number at my kids’ art table, and that my Bobby Flay obsession and celery-ribbing of Vegans is just good fun. REALLY.

It occurs to me: Duff is the process and the real product, as is fun. The fondant medium is gorgeous creative license--endlessly malleable, but ultimately (cake blasephemy?) incidental. Fun matters. The creative process matters. Empathy matters. And yes, a closet full of a happy, non-harmful obsession matters.

Call it tzedakah, call it karma, call it a crux to carry—maybe empathy is the surprise filling. It was a central goal in my kindergarten classroom, is now of fundamental concern in my parenting, is a defining factor in my business—and it is what compels me about creative, charitable events. Via layer #4, Duff gets that. Like the give-it-away, give-it-away, give-it-away now-ness of sharing this place, letting me take the pictures, hear the stories, it is an act of faith--an action. You can write it, paint it, build it, bake it. But you have to do something.
It’s serious and fun in Duff Goldman’s world and I am thrilled to the last bite I got to be there for a little while.

I know you're all waiting for the zest. You're expecting the Hoarfrost in me to say something incendiary like: if it weren’t for the insurance issues, and if Duff were made of marzipan, I would surely suggest we blow something up together and then devour him. But I can’t do that. If you want your celebrity food trollop--I mean dollop--you'll just have to wait for the next installment of the Bobby Flay Game here on HHF. (As if to mock me, Throwdown is on as I type this. Is it an accident or cosmic attempt to thwart me that the episode up is STEAK not cake?)

Bobby may have my tenderloin, but this guy's got me by the duff of my neck. My brain-stem, my empathy?--they belong to the Ace of Cakes.