Duff Goldman Didn't Expect The Scandal Surrounding Trump's Inaugural Cake

Duff Goldman has been not just a super-successful baker but perhaps one of the most famous names in the business throughout much of the current millennium, thanks in no small part to his string of Food Network hit shows. While Goldman may not be exactly telegenic in the generic sense, there's no denying he's got an outsize personality that just seems to jump out at you right through that small screen. Oh, and we hear he makes some pretty decent cakes, too.

While it would be hard to pinpoint one single highlight of Goldman's illustrious career, near the top of the list must be the time he was asked to create a cake for the 2013 inauguration festivities as Barack Obama began his second term in the White House. His cake was quite the masterpiece, multiple layers covered in patriotically-themed fondant. In fact, this inaugural pièce de résistance was apparently so irresistible that it took a second bow at the 2017 inauguration — much to Goldman's surprise, since as his same-day tweet indicated, he hadn't been involved with or even aware of his cake design's encore appearance.

Goldman was perplexed to see a familiar-looking cake at 2017's inaugural festivities for the 45th president. He tweeted a side-by-side shot of two cakes, seemingly identical in design, with the second cake being sliced into by one Donald J. Trump. His caption read, "The cake on the left is the one I made for President Obama's inauguration 4 years ago. The one on the right is Trumps. I didn't make it [smh emoji]."

Holy ganache, what was up with that? The following day, the creators of the clone cake posted an explanation to their Facebook page. According to DC's Buttercream Bakeshop, "While we most love creating original designs, when we are asked to replicate someone else's work we are thrilled when it is a masterpiece like this one [that] @duff_goldman originally created ... for Obama's inauguration 4 years ago." Buttercream's owner Tiffany MacIsaac went into further detail with The Washington Post, telling them that she'd have preferred using the original cake as inspiration alone and put her own spin on a new creation. The unnamed client that commissioned the cake was adamant that "they want[ed] this exact cake," so that's just what they got. The bakery announced, however, that the profits from the cake would be donated to the Human Rights Campaign since, as they said, "Basic human rights are something every man, woman and child — straight, gay or the rainbow in between — deserve!"

While you might think that this explanation would've made this issue go away, that was not the case. Nothing about the past 250 years of national politics has gone unremarked upon or failed to spark debate, and this cake controversy was no exception. While Goldman himself never appeared to take umbrage at the appropriation of his cake design, he was rather nonplussed by the reaction his tweet received. As he told the Daily Beast, "I put it on Twitter saying 'this is interesting' and went to bed. I woke up the next day with 100,000 retweets and said, 'oh sh**, what did I do?'" 

Trump supporters read Goldman's fairly neutral response as being an attack on their favorite POTUS, responding with tweets like "Grow a pair. Donald Trump is the President of the United States, and if you don't like it tough feces." As Goldman revealed, though, he took quite a bit of flak from the other side, as well. TV's favorite baker explained that "People on the left were mad at me because I wasn't angry enough." A few of Goldman's fans, however, had entirely too much fun with the topic. As one Twitter user wrote to another, "The perfect storm of anti-Trump sentiment and creative baking, could this be your favourite tweet of all time ...?" Fortunately, 2021's inauguration featured no such "plagiar-icing," so Twitter has had to go back to sniping about subjects that aren't quite so sweet.