Duff has been cooking since the age of four, when his Mom caught him in the kitchen watching chef Tell and swinging around a meat cleaver. When Duff was in second grade, he almost cut his pinky off while carving a pumpkin. He was destined to work in the kitchen. Duff started working professionally when he was 14, and has been working in kitchens ever since.

When people ask how he got into making cakes, you might say he really had no choice in the matter. Duff’s great-grandmother, Mommo, came from the Ukraine and was a baker and weaver. Her daughter, Duff’s grandmother, Nana, was an art enthusiast who did enameling and was an accomplished and recognized photographer. Duff’s Mom, Jackie, is also an artist who began in ceramics and is now an accomplished stained glass designer on the west coast. Duff himself studied at the Corcoran School in Washington, D.C., and was at one time a graffiti artist of some notoriety.

Duff started working for acclaimed Baltimore chef Cindy Wolf while attending the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. After graduating, Duff left Baltimore to study pastries at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa Valley, California. While in Napa, Duff was a stagiere at the French Laundry, working under acclaimed pastry chef Steven Durfee. Duff left California to become Executive Pastry Chef of the Vail Cascade Hotel and Resort in the mountains of Vail, Colorado. There he worked with such notable chefs as Jessie Llapitan, now executive chef of the Houstonian in Houston, Texas, and chef Jason Rogers, late of Olives in Aspen and now at the Borgota of Atlantic City. Duff then left Colorado to bake bread for Todd English’s Olives in Washington, D.C., where he worked under executive chef Steve Mannino. Duff left Olives in 2000 when he came back to Baltimore to open Charm City Cakes.

In addition to owning and operating Charm City Cakes, Duff is also a sculptor, artist and musician— he plays bass in the indie instrumental band "so I had to?" and is an all around good guy with the cleanest hands in town.