The great thing about cake is it doesn't feel like work. You

When Duff Goldman, the master of sugar and imagination, declared, “The great thing about cake is it doesn’t feel like work. You forget about work. Kids, adults, they all get the same look in their eye when they’re decorating cakes... That’s the magic right there,” he was not merely speaking of baking. He was speaking of joy, of the sacred art of creation that reconnects us to innocence and wonder. His words, light and sweet as frosting, carry the flavor of something profound—the truth that the purest labor is the kind that dissolves the boundary between duty and delight.

For Goldman, a cake is not merely food; it is celebration made tangible, a canvas of love and artistry. When he says it “doesn’t feel like work,” he reminds us of what the ancients knew well—that when the heart aligns with the hands, labor becomes play, and time itself loses its edge. The child painting with icing beside the adult is the image of unity: all ages, all worries forgotten, drawn together by the simple act of creation. The “magic” he speaks of is not illusion—it is the rediscovery of joy through doing something for its own sake, for beauty, for others, for life itself.

In the old days, artisans understood this magic. The potter shaping clay, the weaver at her loom, the sculptor chiseling stone—all knew the same rhythm of creation, where focus becomes freedom. They called it flow, though their language was different: they spoke of harmony, of spirit, of divine inspiration. Goldman’s kitchen is a modern temple of that same power. When he and others craft cakes that seem too wondrous to eat, they do more than bake—they channel the timeless impulse of humanity to make the ordinary extraordinary.

There is a story told of Antonio Stradivari, the violin maker of Cremona. When asked why his instruments sang more beautifully than any other, he replied, “Because I make them as if God Himself will play them.” He labored not for fame, not even for perfection, but for love of the craft. To him, the work itself was sacred. So too does Duff Goldman, in his bakery of color and sweetness, lift cake-making from mere trade to art. He shows us that when we pour love into creation, whether it is sugar or sound, something eternal awakens within it—and within us.

Goldman’s words also carry a lesson about presence. In a world consumed by haste and obligation, to find an activity that makes you “forget about work” is to find the medicine of the soul. Cake, for him, is not escape—it is return. When people decorate, their eyes light up because, for a moment, they are not weighed down by expectation. They are alive, engaged, and whole. That is why both children and adults “get the same look in their eye.” The act of creation awakens what time and toil try to bury—the innocent delight of being human.

This truth reaches beyond the kitchen. It whispers to teachers, artists, workers, and dreamers alike: find what makes you forget the clock, and you will find your calling. Do not seek meaning in titles or applause, but in the quiet moments when your spirit feels light. For in those moments, the labor of life ceases to be burden—it becomes blessing. Duff Goldman’s magic is not just in cakes, but in his understanding that joy itself is the highest craft.

The lesson is simple and golden as sunlight: do what makes your heart rise like bread in an oven. Work that springs from joy becomes both gift and meditation. Practical action: find something that fills you with childlike wonder—bake, paint, plant, sing, build—and give it freely to the world. When you lose yourself in creation, you find yourself again. And in that sacred forgetting, you will taste the sweetest truth of all: that happiness, like cake, is best when shared.