Olimpo López Cáceres (June 24, 1918 – October 16, 2015) was a Colombian

pastry chef A pastry chef or pâtissier (; feminine pâtissière, ) is a station chef in a professional kitchen, skilled in the making of pastries, desserts, breads and other baked goods. They are employed in large hotels, bistros, restaurants, bakeries, b ...

. He was nicknamed "Don Olimpo" by Colombians. López was the creator of the Chocoramo, a packaged square-shaped cake coated in chocolate, as well as the Ponqué Gala. Both desserts are popular treats manufactured by Productos Ramo, a Colombian snack food company which was founded by Rafael Molano, who died in 2014. Lopez's original, secret

recipe A recipe is a set of instructions that describes how to prepare or make something, especially a dish (food), dish of prepared food. A sub-recipe or subrecipe is a recipe for an ingredient that will be called for in the instructions for the main r ...

for the Chocoramo is currently stored in a bank in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. He was born in Jericó,

Boyacá Department Boyacá () is one of the thirty-two departments of Colombia, and the remnant of Boyacá State, one of the original nine states of the "United States of Colombia". Boyacá is centrally located within Colombia, almost entirely within the mount ...

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

, on June 24, 1918. He was raised by his mother, Evangelina Gómez, who taught him how to make

pastries Pastry refers to a variety of doughs (often enriched with fat or eggs), as well as the sweet and savoury baked goods made from them. The dough may be accordingly called pastry dough for clarity. Sweetened pastries are often described as '' bak ...

. López first met Rafael Molano, the founder of Productos Ramo, during the 1940s. In 1968, López began working at Molano's factory in

Mosquera, Cundinamarca Mosquera is a municipality of Colombia in the Western Savanna Province, part of the department of Cundinamarca. Mosquera is close to the capital Bogotá and is part of its metropolitan area. The urban centre of Mosquera is situated at an alti ...

, as a manager and developer of new snack products. The first new dessert he created was the Ponqué Gala. Then, in the early 1970s, López developed the recipe for the Chocoramo, a cake enrobed in a coating of chocolate. Chocoramo proved popular with consumers and become one of Productos Ramo's signature products. Productos Ramo now produces approximately 700,000 Chocoramos per day, or 242 million of the chocolate covered cakes annually. Olimpo López died in

Mosquera Mosquera is a surname of Galician origin, later spreading to other parts of Spain such as Castile and Extremadura or Latin America. The family crest states (Spanish) Gallego. It derives from the mansion of the family's founder, Ramiro de Mosquera. ...

Cundinamarca Department Department of Cundinamarca (, ) is one of the departments of Colombia. Its area covers (not including the Capital District) and it has a population of 2,919,060 as of 2018. It was created on August 5, 1886, under the constitutional terms pre ...

, Colombia, on October 16, 2015, at the age of 97.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lopez, Olimpo 1918 births 2015 deaths Pastry chefs Colombian chefs Colombian inventors People from Boyacá Department People from Cundinamarca Department