Searching for LA’s best bakeries? The host of ‘The Great American Baking Show’ shares her top picks

If there were such a thing as the perfect résumé for hosting The Great American Baking Show, Los Angeles-based actor, writer and comedian Casey Wilson (Happy Endings, SNL) might be the one to have it — despite the fact that she doesn’t bake

She has the sketch comedy and acting experience to pull off the show’s opening skits and introductions to the baking challenges. But also, when it comes to chatting with the bakers throughout the episodes, Wilson literally wrote a book (an audiobook, fittingly) titled The Art of Small Talk with fellow actor, writer and comedian Jessica St. Clair.

What’s unique about making small talk during the Baking Show, which Wilson has co-hosted for four seasons now for The Roku Channel — the latest with her friend and former Black Monday co-star Andrew Rannells (Girls, Another Simple Favor) — is making chit-chat with someone who’s trying to focus on making some elaborate cake, bread or pastry, and likely also pretty stressed.

“ In real life,” Wilson told LAist, “if you saw the emotional state of the people that are baking, you would immediately know, ‘Let me back up and allow them their space.’ Meanwhile, [the producers] are like, ‘Go on in.’ And Andrew and I always say, we're like, ‘Tell us about your grandpa.’”

Luckily, the contestants are good-natured about the whole thing. And Wilson and Rannells’ repartee with the contestants, each other and judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith just add to the overall good vibes of the competition — in keeping with the tradition of the much-beloved original British version of the show.

An added bonus of the American version is some of the cultural confusion that arises, like this exchange featured in the trailer about “box cake”:

Wilson spoke with LAist about what goes on behind the scenes of The Great American Baking Show (the latest season of which premiered on The Roku Channel on May 11) and her top picks for baked goods in Los Angeles.

LA bakeries to check out for non-bakers (and bakers who want a break)

When she’s home in L.A., Wilson says, she’s not so much into baking herself, but because of that, she knows where to go to get a good cake, dessert or bread. She offered this list of her top picks:

• SusieCakes (various locations) :  “I know now it's, like, a chain, but in L.A., I love SusieCakes, and I wanna shout it out. If you have forgotten someone's birthday, it's amazing to order on DoorDash and they have like this old-fashioned cake [...] and they'll write on it. […]  It's wonderful and truly the best cake and cupcakes."
• Lark Cake Shop (Silver Lake): “ Lark, which is a small bakery in Silver Lake; they have an ice box cake that is tremendous. It's incredible.”
• Claudine Kitchen & Bakeshop (Encino):  ”I live in Los Feliz, so that's a drive, and I will embark on it to get these s'mores bites. [...] If I have them, people are angry that I don't have more, and it's the greatest dessert ever.”
• Cake Monkey (Mid-City):  ”My son has celiac disease, so we're always trying to look for gluten-free, which is hard to find, you know, especially for a kid. [...] Cake Monkey is a bakery, more like a Mid-City area, and they have an incredible gluten-free triple berry cake that's great, and they just have a lot of gluten-free options that are awesome.”
•  Breadblok (Silver Lake): “It's all gluten-free breads, and they have some desserts too. They have a brown butter chocolate chip cookie that's wrong — should be illegal. But their breads are so good, and it's for everybody. People go there that aren't even gluten-free because it's just that good.”

The BTS of GBBO (and GABS)

The Great American Baking Show films at the same English countryside location and with the same crew as The Great British Bake Off (titled The Great British Baking Show in the U.S.), many of whom, Wilson explained, have been with the show since the beginning.

One thing Wilson said people are sometimes surprised to learn is that there are no retakes and the time constraints on the baking challenges are very real.

“It's very pure in that sense,” Wilson said. “They have exactly that amount of time. And even a couple times when it was time to say, ‘Bakers, your time is up,’ I would walk slowly 'cause I'd see somebody needing more time and [the producers] are like, 'We see you! Walk!'"

Another surprise to her, Wilson said: “You cannot believe how many camera people there are — I mean, 12 roaming at all times” to capture the bakers’ moves.“ It's kind of like The Truman Show, basically.”

And while you might assume that the short skits that she and Rannells film that introduce each episode’s theme are filmed all at once, they’re not. Instead, they’re always filmed in the early morning hours of the second day of each episode’s two-day shoot.

As for what happens during the week, when filming is done, Wilson explained, “ The poor bakers, they have to practice so much, so they're basically like hostages in their apartments, baking every second. But Andrew and I were a bit more footloose and fancy free, you might say. So we bopped around and we saw shows and we hung out a lot with Paul Hollywood, who I love, and it was just a dream.”