Go Inside Duff Goldman’s Unique L.A. Home Where He Makes Toys, Plays Music and Is ‘Building Stuff Constantly’
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At home, the Food Network star lets his creativity soar with his daughter Josephine, 2, as his muse
The power is out at Duff Goldman’s Los Angeles house. There’s a gallon of homemade sun tea on his butcher-block countertop and a bag of ice that’s quickly melting because of the lack of air conditioning on a 90° day — but the Food Network star and his wife, Johnna, couldn’t be more chill.
“We have a one-in-a-million relationship,” says Duff, 48, of Johnna, 30, whom he met online in 2016 and married in 2019. “I never thought I would have this kind of capacity for love.”
The pair check in with each other and steal the occasional kiss during their People photo shoot (on newsstands Friday). Says Johnna: “He’s just a kind, gentle soul.”
Duff credits his laid-back attitude to this house, where he and Johnna moved after their wedding — it’s surrounded by nature up a steep, unpaved road off a winding canyon highway — and all the hobbies he’s delved into here. He’s been making toys for their daughter Josephine, 2, and practicing the guitar for his band Foie Grock (a play on “foie gras” and “rock and roll”).
“I need to create things because when I don’t, I go crazy,” he says.
Food Network fans watched Duff create hundreds of over-the-top, hyperrealistic cakes at his Baltimore bakery Charm City Cakes for 10 seasons on Ace of Cakes. The baker and his team drew viewers in with their funny rapport and ingenious ideas about how to make an edible Jeep with working lights or the best way to transform a hunk of modeling chocolate into Betty White.
Related: Duff Goldman's 'Super Easy' Rainbow Meringues Are a Colorful Addition to Your Holiday Cookie Spread
Since the show ended in 2011, Duff has mentored the next generation of bakers on shows like Kids Baking Championship and his latest, The Elf on the Shelf: Sweet Showdown (airing now).
After Ace of Cakes ended, Duff moved to Los Angeles to open Charm City Cakes West. But when he closed the location in 2022 after 10 years, he stayed in California. (The original Maryland location still makes and delivers cakes around the country.)
So does he miss frosting and piping? “Sometimes,” he admits. “I think if I wasn’t woodworking, if I wasn’t doing other creative things, playing music, I would probably miss it a lot more.” Plus, “there’s still a lot of baking in the house,” adds Duff, who shoots his cookbooks here.
Food was always Duff’s calling. He was born in Michigan, but when his parents divorced, he split his teen years between Northern Virginia and the small Cape Cod town of Sandwich, Mass., where he worked at a slice shop called Sandwich Pizza and as a fry cook at McDonald’s. After graduating from the University of Maryland and the Culinary Institute of America, he cooked at far posher places, like the French Laundry in Napa Valley.
Courtesy Duff Goldman
Duff's real name is Jeffrey, but as a toddler, his older brother Willie (left) could only pronounce Duffy — and it stuck.Still, when he opened his own shop in 2002 and started filming for Food Network in 2006, “we were still learning how to be cake decorators,” he admits. “We were still learning how to run a business. We were definitely learning how to be on television. We were all very young and naive, but we were plucky, right?”
Now he’s applying that spark to fatherhood. “He’s just as curious about the world as she is,” says Johnna of her husband and their toddler. “He’s just a kid at heart. It’s really cool to see them kind of light up and enjoy the world together.”
"I tell kids to stay weird. Weirdness is great."
Duff Goldman
As Josephine has gotten more mobile, Duff has been inspired to get healthier to keep up. “I’m 48. I’ve got a 2-year-old. You do the math,” he says. He looks down at the black T-shirt he’s wearing and explains, “This was the first shirt that started to not fit. So I hung it up next to my treadmill for motivation.”
Now he starts every morning by taking in the sunrise during a workout in their outdoor gym. “Making the right decisions becomes so much less of a chore because you’re making those decisions for somebody that’s relying on you,” he says. He’s lost 40 lbs. in six months.
It’s hard to believe after seeing the joy parenting brings him, but Duff didn’t think he’d be a dad. “My parents had a really nasty divorce, and I was like, ‘Cool. I don’t ever want any of that,’” he says. “Then I met my wife, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s how you’re supposed to feel about people.’”
On their first date they talked for seven hours, and two weeks later they took a spontaneous trip to Hawaii together. As a writer, artist and flutist, Johnna shares his passion for being creative. “It was obvious pretty quickly that we were really into each other,” he recalls.
These days Duff calls Josephine his muse. She helped inspire him to take up woodworking. “I love toys. Now there’s a reason for me to be making toys,” he says. He’s made her a set of blocks, a busy board and a fish-shaped clock, and he’s working on a chameleon marionette.
The lights in the house suddenly flick on as the power finally returns, and Duff lets out a little “Yay!” in the middle of describing his own light-bulb moments with his daughter.
“I want Josephine to be stimulated and surrounded by things so she can figure out what it is that turns her on,” he says. “There’s a lot of cool stuff in the world, and I just love sharing it with her.”
For more on Duff Goldman, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.
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