at the kitchen table: Estelle Sohne of Flour & Olive

it's the first kitchen dispatch interview!

Emily Duncan

Nov 21, 2024

Hey dispatch pals,

It’s Thursday, Nov. 21st, 2024, and I’m so thrilled to be sharing the first ever kitchen dispatch interview!

Let’s get right into it.

a bit of background

Earlier this fall, I had the opportunity to chat with the incredible Estelle Sohne of Flour & Olive, a brand that makes sofi award-winning olive oil cake mixes that have been featured in Eater and Food & Wine, among other publications.

I first heard about Flour & Olive through the Specialty Food Association (which gives out the sofi awards) and, thanks to Estelle, finally had the pleasure of trying the vanilla cake mix this month. I have to say, I’m a huge fan! I made a fairly basic Italian lemon and mascarpone version for dinner with friends (using this recipe from the Flour & Olive website and García de la Cruz’s everyday olive oil) and it was a hit! Our friends even asked to take a piece each home with them.

Getting to chat with Estelle about the company and her life in food was a delight, and I’m so excited to share the stories of makers like Estelle on this platform, beginning with this inaugural interview.

a look inside Flour & Olive

This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What sparked your interest in food? Many people who end up in the food world grew up in a household where food was important (but not everyone!). Was that the case in your house, or did you come to it later?

I grew up in Accra, Ghana where I attended international schools and was surrounded by people with diverse backgrounds and perspectives. My parents introduced me to a variety of international food at an early age. We had kassler, bouillabaisse and Chinese stir fries at our dinner table alongside jollof rice, kenkey and akple and okro soup. As much as I enjoyed food, I did not like cooking. I developed an interest in cooking after college, but it was not until I became a stay-at-home mother that cooking and baking became a part of my everyday life.

My first informal cooking lessons came from my Alsatian mother-in-law. Alsatian food is a combination of French and German cuisines. Since I had grown up eating food from both countries, it tasted familiar and comforting. What is interesting is that because I was first introduced to that cuisine in Ghana, from time to time, I will adapt a recipe with ingredients more typical of Ghanaian cuisine. For example, I make my galettes de pommes de terre (latkes) with sweet yams, ginger and parsley. I also have a heavier hand with spices than Alsatians and adjust the recipes to intensify flavors.

Being in the United States and far away from both my family and my husband’s family, cooking the food we grew up with was one of the ways in which I introduced my children to their international cultural heritage. When they visit family in France or Ghana, there are few cultural barriers at the dinner table and that has been such a gift to them.

Do you have a favorite food memory? A dish you’ve eaten that you still think about?

I have many memories around food, but one that sticks out is the first time I tasted an Alsatian apple tart. My mother-in-law baked it when I first visited my husband’s family in a village near Strasbourg. The combination of baked apples, with a slightly tart custard and a superb pâte sucrée crust was so different from any dessert I had had before and I thought it was simply amazing. His grandmother also made her own fruit-flavored eau-de-vie which was served just after dessert as a digestif. I don’t drink much alcohol, but I fell in love with it. Flour & Olive’s Alsatian Apple cake with Crème Fraiche Whipped Cream is actually a translation of that experience.

How did Flour & Olive come about, and why olive oil cake mixes in particular? Was there a moment that sparked the idea for you?

After staying at home with my children for about 10 years, I knew it was time to think about the next phase of my life. Having stepped away from law during that time, I no longer saw myself as an attorney and I also wanted to do something that I enjoyed, that I could have more control over and that could also bring joy and value to others. In addition, I wanted my children to know that it was possible to dream and through passion and perseverance, turn their dreams into reality.

Since I enjoyed cooking and baking, I decided to create a specialty food product to give life to those ideas, but the idea for an olive oil cake mixes in particular came about by chance. I was walking through a grocery store looking for ideas for a food product and happened to walk down an aisle with American baking mixes across from international olive oils. As soon as I saw that, it felt like the perfect combination of all the ideas I was hoping to realize.

Being self-employed can mean long hours. In my house, we’re always looking to add more recipes to our rotation for when time’s running short to make dinner, so I’m curious to know – do you have a go-to weeknight dinner for when things get hectic? (Ordering in counts!)

When I was in college, a friend of mine with Pakistani heritage used to make keema with spinach. This is a cumin-spiced ground meat and spinach stew with a touch of tomato sauce. I do not remember what her recipe was, but I regularly make a quick version of it that I have simplified over the years and that my family loves. I serve it with microwaveable frozen rice and it comes together in 10-15 minutes. My husband and children think it tastes better with grated Emmental cheese!

(I’ve never had this, but am excited to try! Here’s a recipe from an Indian and Pakistani couple that blogs about food.––Ed.)

And last but certainly not least, what’s next for Flour & Olive? What are you working on now?

I am very grateful for our sofi win and the Specialty Food Association’s commitment to supporting product excellence and innovation and to shaping the future of food. Most of our recognition and the opportunities coming our way stem directly from that. I am still working through where we go from here, but my north star is ensuring that our products bring value and joy to whomever they touch and that our growth is sustainable.

I’ve been working on some fun collaborations with other specialty food products and people in the food world. In particular, Jerrelle Guy, a 2019 James Beard runner-up is baking our Colombian Almond cake recipe with Jamaican-owned Flor de la Jara’s extra virgin olive oil for her Substack blog, The Dinner Ritual. George Gensler, along with other members of the Manhattan Chocolate Society, is also planning on baking our Gold Coast Chocolate cake recipe, with chocolate the society will make using premium organic cocoa beans sourced from Three Mountains Cocoa, a Ghanaian company. And Sara Jiminez of Somm in the City, a distinguished and certified olive oil and wine sommelier, recently shared a reel with a wine pairing, which you can watch on the Somm in the City Instagram.

Helping to bring attention to the incredible diversity of olive oil, specialty ingredients such as Ghanaian cocoa and chocolate, and the possibilities of pairing our cake mixes with wine are dreams I had for the company - it feels really good to see them turn into reality!

Thanks for your time, Estelle!

You can keep up with these collaborations and everything else to come for this fabulous company through Flour & Olive’s Instagram, and order their mixes to try for yourself directly from the company website.

and that’s the latest dispatch from my kitchen.

Some more general updates from my side of the world:

I’m now writing for Yahoo! Creators in the food section. Want to check out what I’m doing over there? Here are my ideas for home cooks who want to change things up a bit this Thanksgiving and my simple weeknight bolognese recipe.
The first made-for-TV Christmas rom-com I worked on as a writer, now titled Engaged by Christmas, will premiere on Lifetime on Sunday, Dec. 22nd!
I’ll be appearing the Nerdy for 30 Podcast with my very funny pals Tim and Kevin to discuss the instant Christmas classic(?) Red One, episode dropping Thurs. Dec. 5th.
I’m going to Japan very soon! Shout with your Tokyo food and drink recommendations.

Hope you’re just peachy keen!

Dispatch to you soon,