Desserts alone didn't put L.A.'s Alma at the top of this year's Best New Restaurants list, but this Buttermilk Cake with Sour Milk Jam and Gin-Poached Cherries is a good example of the restaurant's deceptively casual style. It seems like it might be a simple, homey kind of dish—we can imagine what buttermilk cake tastes like, and gin-poached cherries don't sound too outré. But then there's the sour milk jam—really more of a weird approach to frosting, or a not-particularly-dulce de leche, than an actual jam. And there's the extra juniper, thrown in while poaching the cherries, to give each bite of cake-jam-cherry a botanical kick. Taste all of this together, and you've got a whole that's much more than the sum of its easy-to-make parts.
A Surprisingly Easy Cake from Alma, America's Best New Restaurant
Buttermilk Cake with Sour Milk Jam and Gin-Poached Cherries is a good example of Alma's deceptively casual style, and it's easy to make at home, too
© Michael Graydon