BEHIND THE CHECK-OUT counter at Rexall Grill in Duluth, scattered among scores of family photos, is a snapshot of Clint Eastwood and a postcard from President Bush and first lady Laura Bush.

At the door, a tiny erase board has Philippians 4:6 scrawled in black pen: "Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God."

NICK ARROYO/AJC Staff (ENLARGE)
Rexall Grill's chocolate cake (left) uses fudge, not frosting, that melts in your mouth. Also yummy is the peanut butter cake — which goes pretty fast.
LOUIE FAVORITE/AJC Staff (ENLARGE)
Sink your teeth into coconut layer cake from Southern Sweets, which also serves up a divine cherry pie and caramel cake.
LOUIE FAVORITE/AJC Staff (ENLARGE)
Sweet Auburn Bread Company owner Sonya Jones' sweet potato cheesecake has gotten a lot of hype since President Bill Clinton raved about it when he visited the city.
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Please God: Let them have peanut butter cake today.

But they do not. And for a moment, I wonder if somehow the universe is punishing me for speeding up Buford Highway in time to make it to this meat-and-two for lunch.

Rexall Grill is more than just a place to eat; it is a community. And though most folks are stopping in for ham and fried okra, the cakes and cobbler here are heavenly reward.

Sandra Wood makes all the cakes for owner Gail Herrin. Sandy has a broad smile, sandy hair and twinkling eyes and will shake your hand firmly and apologize for the lack of peanut butter cake. She makes it when she makes it, and when it runs out, it runs out. It runs out fast.

Sandy is the kind of Southern baker who knows what she knows because at someone's elbow, the magic that happens when butter and sugar cream together with eggs, then flour, was revealed to her. She enjoys how it feels when a smile comes over the face of whomever is biting into a piece of her chocolate cake. The spell spreads like frosting, then multiplies like cupcakes.

My mother makes a cake like the one Sandy makes and calls it Texas sheet cake. It is, like all Southern cakes should be, fine-grained and moist; both versions are covered with a mantle of rich fudge. Not frosting. Fudge poured over the cake while both are still hot. Sandy's and my mother's cakes taste identical, but Sandy's comes in three layers. And when I take a bite and let that fudge dissolve on my tongue, childhood memories rush to my brain like the sugar going into my bloodstream.

This cake, like so many other Southern classics, is rarely eaten outside the home, a reason so many great Southern desserts — red velvet (OK, I know the debate, but I'm claiming this one for the South), coconut cake, sweet potato pie, chess pie, banana pudding — are hard to come by these days, since Southern bakers are a dying breed. Rarely do you run across these genteel gems on modern menus, unless, like me, you go looking for them.

Sandy's coconut cake is a version that uses three moist yellow layers drenched in sour cream, sugar and coconut — a concoction that seeps into the cake overnight (some recipe versions have the cake soak for three to seven days). It's this goo (something my grandmother always referred to as "goodie") that makes the cake almost puddinglike, but with texture, and it gives what would otherwise be overpoweringly sweet an incredible tang.

Rexall Grill serves darned good cobbler, too, made with canned peaches and a thick biscuit crust that soaks up all the juice from the sugar and fruit.

Her cobbler is a rarity, for if Southern desserts and their bakers are becoming remnants of the near-past, pies and cobblers are the first to go: Very few area bakeries serve good Southern pies anymore.

Sonya Jones is an exception. Her bakery, Sweet Auburn Bread Company, has known many previous locations, but lets hope the tiny shop on Auburn Avenue downtown will be where it finally makes a home.

Jones has parlayed a lot of PR mileage from her famous encounter with Bill Clinton, who raved about her sweet potato cheesecake when, still president, he visited Atlanta.

Pretty much anything Jones mixes with sweet potato tastes good — a morning muffin is as moist as cake, full of musky flavor and hints of ginger; her sweet potato pie is the best in the area, with firm, fleshy flavor to the custard and a proper flake to the hand-made crust. And her lemon chess ... oh my goodness!

McEntyre's Bakery in Smyrna bakes a pecan pie that rivals homemade (I won't tell if you won't), with a crust that's flaky and light and filled with a rich custard-and-syrup filling that manages to not get too sticky sweet. In Smyrna for more than 40 years, the bakery is about to be displaced by development, but signs on the front door promise a new home soon.

Stepping inside is like stepping back to 1968. The tiny shop barely has room enough to turn around, and the pastry cases that line three-quarters of it are chock-full of strawberry, caramel, chocolate and coconut cakes. But what most people in these parts consider the bakery's greatest cachet is its TV Bar, which, with its dense chocolate cake and crown of white sugar-and-shortening frosting (dipped in a thin layer of chocolate coating like a Nut Brown Crown without the nuts) is sort of a cross between a MoonPie and a Hostess cupcake.

If cake is truly the grande dame of Southern desserts, few in the area hold court as majestically as Southern Sweets in Decatur. Owner Nancy Cole started baking for corporate clients, then opened a shop near the DeKalb Farmers Market many years back. Her best: caramel cake with a buttery-tasting caramel fudge on top, smeared over yellow layers of moist perfection. Southern Sweets also bakes a cherry pie that rivals those childhood orbs of sticky sweetness baked with tart cherry engulfed in crust that we've all snuck extra bites of when no one was looking.

When you order a slice of chocolate layer cake at Grandma Luke's in Little Five Points, baker and part-owner Carl Wilson will come to the counter from the back just to make sure it's cut properly. He'll also tell you to bring the fudgy layers to room temperature before eating, because he uses a lot of butter in his recipes. This is not a light, fine-crumbed cake. It's dense and chocolatey, with a rich cocoa frosting. And though it's hard to pass up, I'd rather bite into one of this new bakery/cafe's peanut butter cookies, made with a sandwich of peanut butter frosting that will make your mouth say hi and ... well, it's really peanuty like peanut butter fudge. The only version better is the Reese's peanut butter cookies at Flying Biscuit in Candler Park, which are criminally intense and way too hard to put down once you start munching on them.

As for coconut cake, Angie Mosier's version of Rich's famous concoction at Blue-Eyed Daisy Bakeshop inside the Serenbe community in south Fulton County is a moist, elegantly crumbed, not-too-sweet stack of sweet and lowdown.

Want more?

After scouring the ATL (and tasting more than 30 cakes), here's the skinny on what's phat:

For red velvet cake, A Piece of Cake in Buckhead and Roswell (404-351-2253, www.pieceofcakeinc.com) makes a fluffy, moist, fine-crumbed version that's bright red like it oughta be and smacks of cocoa flavor.

For banana pudding, head to Louise's (428 Ponce de Leon, 404-817-9513), where owner Louise Holmes makes a batch every now and then. Hers is a version that skips a few steps on the scratch rule but tastes like a bite of fluffy heaven nonetheless, with clouds of custard and cream mixed together, then layered with vanilla wafers and bananas.

Five Forks restaurant in Lilburn (5394 Five Forks Trickum Road, 770-923-5422) bakes excellent coconut layer cake and caramel cake — owner Ann Sarubbi's caramel frosting has a brown sugar and butter fudginess that will make your teeth hurt.

And if you need a bite of that wartime ration favorite, Coca-Cola Cake, Park 75 (75 14th St. N.E., Atlanta, inside the Four Seasons Hotel, fourseasons.com) will be happy to accommodate. If you don't see it on the menu, ask.

THE 411:

Blue-Eyed Daisy Bakeshop, 9065 Selborne Lane (inside Serenbe), Palmetto. 770-463-8379, www.blueeyeddaisy.com

Flying Biscuit, 655 McClendon Ave. 404-687-8888, Candler Park, www.flyingbiscuit.com

Grandma Luke's, 1156 Euclid Ave. 404-584-0444, Little Five Points, www.grandmalukes.com

McEntyre's Bakery, 2943 Atlanta Road, Smyrna. 770-434-3115, www.mcentyresbakery.com

Rexall Grill, 3165 Buford Highway N.W., Duluth. 770-623-8569, www.rexallgrill.com

Sweet Auburn Bread Company, 234 Auburn Ave., N.E. 404-221-1157, www.sweetauburnbread.com

Southern Sweets, 186 Rio Circle, Decatur. 404-373-8752, www.southernsweets.com