After-Work Gourmet by Lisa Messinger

I didn't need a homemade dish when I went to my friend's Saturday night supper club. I had something better: a good story. After Emily's fourth course of gourmet food — new recipes that she had created and experimented with for days (just as she did every week) before springing perfected versions on family and friends during her gloriously eclectic dinner parties — I was up.

I was supposed to bring dessert. As usual, after the long week of my more-than-full-time managing editor job, plus additional writing deadlines, as well as an errand-packed Saturday, I was too pooped to prepare pudding, let alone anything else. Knowing this ahead of time, my imagination went into overdrive days earlier. What could I bring that was worthy of fainting over, let alone had some cachet to it?

The answer: my favorite cake in the world. And since we all lived fairly close to my neighborhood, I could do the good deed of cluing these folks in about a uniquely charming little dessert nook that they probably had no idea existed. Plus, I had a pretty good story about it to get their attention.

"Carnie Wilson baked this cake just for you," I began.

"What? Carnie Wilson, the Wilson Phillips girl group hit singer, funny girl and perennial sunny TV host?" some of them chanted. "For us? How?"

"Well, I picked it up this morning, warm, straight from her pan. I wanted to share it with you, since it's the best cake I've ever tasted."

I had retrieved it from Sweet Harts, the aforementioned little-known dessert haven just steps from my house in the celeb-packed enclave of Sherman Oaks, Calif., near many film and TV studios. Sweet Harts, in fact, was the brainchild of "Sherman Oakser" Melissa Joan Hart, who made her name playing "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch" on television.

The tiny spot, reworked from a remodeled dry cleaners, is like a mini magic kingdom. Every inch, surrounded by brightly painted walls, is the replica of old-fashioned candy and ice cream parlors out of a Norman Rockwell painting, as well as the 1970s childhoods of sweets aficionados like Hart, Wilson and me. The shop is filled with huge glass jars of retro candy, unusually flavored frozen yogurt of outstanding quality (such as homemade "fruit punch") and gelato (such as salted caramel) and cases stuffed with unique baked goods. Hart has said she would have liked the fun shop to be the first in a chain.

First, I stuck to my standard favorite flavors of baked goods, such as chocolate or coconut. My husband's love, though, is bread pudding. So when I saw a toffee bread pudding cake with a handwritten sign on it that Carnie Wilson had baked it with love, I knew I must get it for him.

Little did I know, even after many international food press travels, it would be the best cake I ever tasted. It sported one layer after another of expertly blended gooey flavors, including nuts, chocolate chips, raisins and multiple spices, crowned by freshly ground cinnamon.

The first time I saw Wilson's name there, I asked the counter clerk and then double-checked with manager, due to the singer's public battles with extreme ups and downs of weight, "This is low-fat or low-sugar or something like that, right?" I was assured, no, Wilson, a friend of Hart, loves to bake for others, and this is full-fledged, full-flavor stuff.

Was it ever. Wilson started with a slightly larger homemade, hand-delivered line at Sweet Harts, in her own kitchen's burned, well-used baking pans, but as customers dwindled from lack of knowledge about this magical place, it was reduced to this one stellar cake.

I made it my business to keep Hart's dream going. I became a regular customer, frequenting them for their frozen yogurt superior to the other approximate 100 outlets of various mass-market yogurt chains in the neighborhood, treating my nieces and nephews to after-birthday gelato there and giving them, everyone and anyone gift certificates so they would be charmed by the place, which also sported an equally fun private party room.

The morning of the Saturday night supper club, I made a special point to stop by just as the store opened to have first dibs on Wilson's cake — at this point, she usually baked just one per day. That's when I got it still warm from Wilson's oven. The club members ooed and ahhed when they tasted it and started singing 1990s "Hold On," Wilson Phillips' first No. 1 hit.

Sadly, a few months after that, over winter holiday season 2011, the shop shut down and looked for new ownership. Fortunately, deals have been made, and there's a 2012 grand re-opening.

What I learned more from this experience than your favorite places are not always the ones that survive is that, when trying to get out of making a homemade potluck contribution due to a time crunch, what is the icing on the top of a simply mouthwatering, stand-out purchased contribution is also having a delicious story about its uniqueness.

If, however, you do want to add a homemade touch — and follow Wilson's rich style — try her 2005 cookbook, "To Serve with Love" (Hay House, $19.95)

Photo courtesy of ABC.go.com

Lisa Messinger is a first-place winner in food writing from the Association of Food Journalists and the author of seven food books, including "Mrs. Cubbison's Best Stuffing Cookbook" and "The Sourdough Bread Bowl Cookbook." She also writes the Creators News Service "Cooks' Books" column. To find out more about Lisa Messinger and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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