olive oil cake

This dessert is a reworked version of my ‘21 Lodgepole NYE Champagne dinner brought back January ‘23 for our regular dessert menu. I love this dessert so much, the intricacy of how the grape dances with the tarragon, honey, and yogurt is unmatched. Originally, this dessert was olive oil cake with grape curd, froyo, white chocolate, orange marmalade, honey seafoam crunch, tarragon creme anglaise, & sugared grapes. That version was delicious, but I grew so much as a chef and wanted to revisit and tweak it a bit.

At the Lodgepole NYE Champagne dinner every year, we incorporate the sugared grape tradition into the menu, typically it ends up on the dessert course. I wanted the grape flavour to carry more weight than just simply existing as a sugared grape on the plate. The concentrated white grape flavour in the curd was a little bit of a challenge to get just right, but it turned out so well. Grape is a flavour I want to see more commonly used in desserts, I think it’s really slept on and has great potential.