Duff Goldman’s daughter Josephine is only 4, but she already has big ideas when it comes to design.
The famed pastry chef, 50, shared a sweet family anecdote while chatting with PEOPLE during the 2025 South Beach Wine & Food Festival on Feb. 22.
Goldman says he and his wife, Johnna Colbry, were just waking up on a recent morning when Josephine came in with a bold idea.
“She was asking me to build her a shelf in her room underneath her window so that her stuffed animals could see her when she got home from school,” he recalls. “And I was like, ‘That is really specific.’”
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The Food Network star told his daughter, “Show me what you’re talking about.”
“And she’s like, ‘I want a shelf from here to here that sticks out to here, so I can put all my animals so they can face that way and see the driveway when I come home from school,’” he says. “And I was so moved and proud that she was laying in bed looking out her window and designed that whole thing in her head and then came upstairs and was like, ‘I want this thing on my window.’”
The Kids Baking Championship cohost says it reminded him of the way his own mind works.
“There was something about the fact that she was able to visualize what she wanted, because I do the same thing,” he explains. “My wife, she sees me kind of going into outer space all the time because I’ll sort of zone out, and it’s because I’m trying to figure out how to build a cake, and I’m like, ‘Okay, I need this piece of pipe here, and I need a little motor here.’”
Duff Goldman/Instagram
“But I do it in my head a lot, and my daughter did it, and I was so proud of her for being able to just sort of design this thing in her head and then tell me what she wanted and articulate it,” he adds.
Goldman recently shared another creative request from Josephine: a brain cake for her fourth birthday.
“So after Halloween I asked Josephine what kind of cake she wanted for her birthday and she immediately said ‘a brain,’” Goldman wrote on Instagram on Feb 9.
“I’ve been asking since Halloween and she didn’t change her answer once. She wanted a brain. I’m the cake guy, if my daughter wants a brain, she gets a brain,” he added.
The accompanying photo showed Goldman smiling while carrying the hilariously detailed pink confection, featuring large googly eyes and candles.
“Josephine is 4?! That blows my MIND,” was written in purple icing underneath the cake.
Goldman tells PEOPLE he thought Josephine would eventually change her mind on her cake of choice.
“I was like, ‘You want Bluey?’ And she’s like, ‘No,’” he recalls. “’You want Minnie Mouse?’ ‘No.’”
“So I made it, and it was super weird, and everybody loved it, and it was totally hilarious, man,” he adds.
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