EVOO-Based Ingredient Makes Desserts Healthier

An Italian startup is work­ing to make sweets a lit­tle health­ier.

They have cre­ated a unique olive oil-based prod­uct, called Cremoli. ​“It’s a real raw mate­r­ial ded­i­cated to indus­trial and arti­san con­fec­tionery and bak­ery, both for sweet and savory snacks, bis­cuits, cakes and ice-cream, which can replace com­monly used fats like but­ter, mar­garine and other unhealthy veg­etable and ani­mal fats,” Filippo Pompili Ferrari explained.

Named after King Midas from Greek Mythology which turned every­thing he touched into solid gold, Mida+ is an Italian startup with the goal to develop new and healthy fats.

Pompili, a young EVOO pro­ducer, founded the com­pany with Eraldo Rossi, a con­sul­tant with 35 years of expe­ri­ence in Italian lead­ing com­pa­nies in the food sec­tor; Matteo Rossi, an archi­tect and cre­ative who chose the name and man­ages com­mer­cial activ­i­ties; and Francesco Ascenzi, a finan­cial advi­sor.

“The Cremolì project started when we thought about the pos­si­bil­ity to have a fat with the same tex­ture of but­ter but with a health­ier com­po­si­tion,” Pompili revealed. ​“Moreover, it would have been great to use Italian extra vir­gin olive oil for this pur­pose.”

Two years and a half of research led to excel­lent results. Based on the prin­ci­ples of health, qual­ity of raw mate­ri­als, inno­va­tion and sus­tain­abil­ity they devel­oped through a mechan­i­cal process, with­out the use of chem­i­cals, an inno­v­a­tive prod­uct with more than 80 per­cent extra vir­gin olive oil in its fat com­po­si­tion, solid at room tem­per­a­ture and with a melt­ing point of 26 – 27°C (78.8 – 80.6°F).

“The prod­uct is unique and there is still no mar­ket class for this spe­cial olive oil-based fat,” Pompili said. The pro­duc­t’s label has only four ingre­di­ents: extra vir­gin or vir­gin olive oil from EU and Italy upon request, and other com­po­nents of nat­ural ori­gin.

Cremolì is avail­able in two vari­ants: vir­gin olive oil-based, rec­om­mended for the con­fec­tionery indus­try due its light fla­vor, and extra vir­gin olive oil-based for more savory prod­ucts, where the stronger taste can add value. There is a line rec­om­mended for cakes, bis­cuits, pas­try, bread sticks, crack­ers, pizza and ice-cream, and another one per­fect for puff pas­try.

“The grat­i­fi­ca­tion and rev­o­lu­tion came from bring­ing extra vir­gin olive oil into the indus­trial world,” Pompili declared, based on his expe­ri­ence of high-qual­ity EVOO pro­ducer. ​“Our cre­ation gives prod­ucts the same char­ac­ter­is­tics of crisp­ness, tex­ture and taste pro­vided by palm oil, mar­garine and but­ter,” he explained.

“It is com­posed only of high-qual­ity veg­etable fats, it is free of cho­les­terol, preser­v­a­tives, gluten, ani­mal, hydro­genated oils and trans fats. It does not con­tain aller­gens and it is suit­able for veg­ans, retain­ing all the nutri­tional and ben­e­fi­cial char­ac­ter­is­tics of olive oil, thanks to an inno­v­a­tive low-tem­per­a­ture trans­for­ma­tion process. It is not true that what is healthy can­not be good.”