Best Dessert Menu (Oakland County)
Sweet Lorraine’s
Not too many people skip dessert when dining at Sweet Lorraine’s. Lorraine Platman, the restaurant’s co-owner and namesake, likes to have fun with desserts. She eschews the current trend of high-tech “plated desserts” in favor of creations that bring a new twist to familiar treats. A brownie isn’t just a brownie. It’s an “adult” brownie, X-rated because it is drizzled with a Kahlua-chocolate syrup and topped with White Russian ice cream. Platman cooks with seasonal ingredients and enjoys inventing new desserts. But she finds that if she tries to take any of her standards off the menu, customers revolt. “Someone will say, ‘I’ve driven all this way for the Scottish pudding,’” Platman laughs. Other popular standards are apple brown betty, carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, cheesecake du jour, and a rich chocolate cake with raspberry filling. Platman loves to cook (“I go to sleep thinking about food”), and holidays of all sorts give her a chance to get even more creative. Leprechaun bread pudding for St Patrick’s Day, coconut-ginger rice pudding for Chinese New Year, crème brûlée napoleon for Valentine’s Day. “Fancy desserts that look better than they taste is not what we’re going for. We try to be very real, our desserts are closer to comfort food, “ says Platman. Everything at Sweet Lorraine’s is made from scratch from the finest ingredients. “We don’t cut corners,” says Gary Sussman who is the restaurant’s co-owner, Platman’s spouse, and chief taster. “We use real butter, real eggs. We whip our own cream, no stabilizers, just cream and sugar. We make our own caramel.” You might think Platman goes to extremes she describes a special she did one summer: S’mores made of chocolate ganache on a cookie, topped with homemade (!) marshmallow. Sweet Lorraine’s has locations in Southfield, Madison Heights and Livonia.
