Bourbon Olive Oil Chocolate Cake
This decadant and moist chocolate olive oil cake is made with Olive These Foods' Bourbon Olive Oil. The bourbon olive gives the cake a secret ingredient, making it extraordinary. Recipe provided by Ol...
Local Olive Ranch Goes Gourmet with Bourbon Barrel-Aged Olive Oil
When Cathy Bernell of Olive These Foods and Lone Star Olive Ranch in Madisonville, Texas first came up with the idea of testing and producing a bourbon-barreled olive oil, her business partners thought it sounded like a terrible idea. But Bernell isn’t one to balk at unconventional ideas or strange pairings.
“Their reaction was, ‘No, no, that’s a terrible idea. It’s going to leak out of the barrel and the oxygen will penetrate the oil in the barrel and make it rancid.’ To be honest, the only reason I came up with the idea is because I’m a bourbon drinker and love things like bourbon-barreled maple syrup. I’m also the type of person who is willing to try wacky ideas just to see how they’ll work out. ‘What do we have to lose? What’s so wrong with trying it?’ That’s how I approach everything,” Bernell says.
To test out the strange marriage of flavors, Bernell and her team took their extra virgin olive oil to Treaty Oak Distilling out in Dripping Springs and utilized a freshly used bourbon barrel to begin the culinary experiment. And like Bernell’s partners expected, the first stages of the test weren’t exactly palatable. It turned out what was needed was time and persistence. The taste tests continued for several weeks until, one day, something delicious had happened.
“By the time it came out, the whole flavor profile had changed into something incredible. It had absorbed these vanillas, caramels, bourbon and even wood notes from the barrel. It was almost perfect.”
Olive These Foods was born as an olive oil-focused provisions partnership between Lone Star Olive Ranch and Texana Olive Ranch. According to Bernell, the gourmet company has produced five fifty-five gallon barrels of the olive oil and have even been issued a provisional patent due to the fact that the product is the first of its kind.
The company isn’t just dabbling in bourbon experiments either. In fact, based on Bernell’s childhood affection for honey butter, Olive These Foods also produces a decadent honey olive oil spread called Beevo. Back to the bourbon barrel, also in the works at Olive These Foods is a non-food product: How about grooming with a bourbon-barreled olive oil beard oil?
“We’re creating lots of products from our favorite childhood foods that aren’t traditionally good for you, and that’s one part of our principles. We’re making foods with a commitment to health, lifestyle and tradition. Olive oil doesn’t have to just be a companion food. It can replace something and change the way we experience some of our favorite foods.” Think chocolate olive oil cake!
And though Bernell loves sourcing from her olive ranch, she hopes that the popularity of Olive These Foods’ products will encourage the business to take her traveling mill, Texas Mobile Mill – which press olives into an oil – to other U.S.-based olive ranches to continue growing the company’s product line. “We use all Texas products, but our goal is to outgrow the state,” she says. “The olive industry in Texas is so very small, so we’d like to get to the point of being so popular that we have to look to other olive ranches to meet the demand.”
To find out where to buy Olive These Foods’ products, visit their website.
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