Editor’s Introduction

Olive oil cake is a type of cake made with olive oil instead of butter or other fats, resulting in a moist and tender texture. The olive oil imparts a subtle, fruity flavor that complements ingredients like citrus, nuts, and spices, making the cake taste unique and refined. This choice of oil also helps keep the cake moist longer and provides a soft crumb. The Orange Olive Oil cake recipe is one of our most popular desserts. 

Dorie Greenspan wrote recently about discovering the popularity of olive oil cakes. She reminisced about her 30-year-old recipe, Pierre Hermé’s Ligurian Lemon Cake, made with extra-virgin olive oil.

“I probably wouldn’t have remembered it if at least three people, in response to hearing that I was working on a book of simple cakes, didn’t ask me if I was going to make an olive oil cake. The question took me by surprise. What was the big deal with using olive oil in a cake? 

In her newsletter, Dorie credits Kylie Jenner for creating the “delicious cake wave.”  Olive Oil Cake recipes fill an entire category on TikTok. There are 48,373 posts with the tag #oliveoilcake on Instagram.

The Specialty Food Association’s 2024 Gold sofi™ (the “Oscar” of the specialty food industry) in the Baking Mixes category, went to Flour & Olive, a line of cake mixes specifically designed for making olive oil cakes at the Summer Fancy Food Show. Impressed by the clever concept (interactive recipe maps and downloadable recipe labels), the beautiful branding, and the warmth and enthusiasm of the founder, we invited Estelle Sohne to tell us about herself and describe the product to our readers.  

About Flour & Olive by Estelle Sohne

I am a former attorney turned stay-at-home mother with a love of baking. I created Flour & Olive’s international line of olive oil cake mixes after walking down a baking aisle and noticing traditional American baking mixes across from international olive oils. My concept seeks to bridge these worlds and create cakes with an ingredient traditionally associated with savory dishes. 

Flour & Olive produces four cake mixes – Almond, Chocolate, Ginger, and Vanilla –from a custom blend of unbleached and whole wheat flour. 

Global recipes

Olive oils have widely differing characteristics depending on the variety and age of the olive trees, terrain, rainfall and more: this is called terroir. Even oils from the same country and region can vary between robust and mild, sharp and buttery. Flour & Olive cake mixes offer over 70 recipes from more than 45 countries, using ingredients and baking methods from around the world that are accessible to the average home cook.

I hope that the cake-making process, from purchasing the ingredients to choosing an extra virgin olive oil and smelling and tasting the cakes, will evoke the experience of the country the cake is from. 

The experience

Flour & Olive provides a baking experience that connects all these aspects of food through its cake mixes, recipes, and interactive cake map.

The brand’s logo, composed of the olive flower and fruit, is inspired by the Ghanaian Akwaaba hospitality symbol, which means “welcome” in the Akan language of Ghana. The connected olives represent cooperation, and the flowers seat the world at a single olive oil table.

It is challenging to imbue a product with all the magic food brings us. Food is not just sustenance but infused with nature, history, and culture. It transports us to other places and fills us with a sense of nostalgia, adventure, and belonging.  The company’s mixes are intended to set customers on a sensory journey through which they can celebrate both the cultural diversity of their cake recipes and olive oil’s reminder of our common humanity.