Standardization and assessment of blended cookies for nutritional quality

Introduction

Cookies are widely consumed due to their affordability, convenience, ready-to-eat nature, and long shelf life. However, conventional cookies are mainly prepared from refined wheat flour, sugar, and fat, making them energy-dense but relatively low in dietary fibre and micronutrients. Growing awareness of the relationship between diet and health has increased interest in developing functional bakery products enriched with natural ingredients. Custard apple (Annona squamosa), commonly known as sitaphal or sugar apple, is a nutrient-rich fruit containing carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals and is beneficial for energy and nervous system function (Gopalan et al., 1989) [5] . Processing custard apple into value-added products such as pulp powder can extend shelf life and improve utilization while retaining its nutritional and functional properties (Khodifad et al., 2016) [9] . Cookies provide a suitable medium for incorporating custard apple pulp powder because of their wide consumer acceptance and storage stability. Additionally, fruit byproducts such as pomegranate peel powder and orange peel powder are rich in dietary fibre, phenolic compounds, flavonoids, antioxidants, and minerals, making them valuable ingredients for enhancing the nutritional quality of bakery products while promoting sustainable utilization of agro-waste (Braddock, 1999; Gorinstein et al., 2001; Ismail et al., 2014) [4,6,7] . However, the incorporation of such non-traditional ingredients may influence dough characteristics, baking quality, texture, colour, flavour, and overall acceptability. Therefore, standardization of formulation levels and evaluation of physico-chemical and sensory attributes are essential for developing acceptable and nutritious functional cookies.

Materials and Methods

The experiment was conducted during 2022-23 at the Postharvest Laboratory, College of Horticulture, Mojerla, Wanaparthy, Telangana and laid out in a factorial completely randomized design (FCRD) with three replications comprising ten treatments consisting of

Results and Discussion

The properties of the raw material used like wheat flour, custard apple pulp powder, pomegranate peel powder, orange peel powder were analyzed and presented in Table 1.

The analysis for starch (%) during storage (Table 2) revealed that cookies made with 100% wheat flour (T 1 ) had the highest starch content (43.40%), followed by T 8 (38.05%), while the lowest (24.81%) was observed in T 4 (40% wheat flour + 60% custard apple pulp powder). The starch content decreased significantly during storage, from 34.58% at day 0 to 30.86% at 90 th day. Among interactions, the highest starch content (45.00%) was recorded in T 1 at day 0, whereas the lowest (22.72%) was found in T 7 at 90 days. Starch content in wheat flour used as raw material is highest among the ingredients (Table 1), hence it might have led to higher starch content in the treatment T 1 containing 100% wheat flour. The reduction in starch content during storage may be due to gelatinization and conversion into reducing sugars, consistent with earlier findings (Ndife et al. 2014; Le-Bail et al. 2018) [11,10] .

The results revealed that combination of different flours had significantly affected protein content during storage of cookies (Table 3). The highest protein content was observed in T 1 (100% wheat flour, 19.61%), followed by T 5 (80% wheat flour+14% custard apple pulp+6% pomegranate peel, 17.86%), while the lowest was recorded in T 10 (40% wheat flour+54% custard apple pulp+6% orange peel, 13.29%), which was on par to T 4 (13.36%). Protein content gradually decreased during storage from 16.53% on the 0 th day to 15.83% on the 90 th day. Interaction effects revealed that maximum protein (19.88%) was recorded in T 1 on the 0 th day and the minimum (12.96%) in T 10 on the 90 th day. The higher protein in T 1 is attributed to 100% wheat flour, which had the highest protein content among the raw materials used (Table 1). The decline in protein during storage may be due to denaturation and aggregation of proteins under temperature and humidity, reducing solubility and digestibility, consistent with observations by Sobhan et al. (2014) [15] and Sujirtha and Mahendran (2015) [16] .

The data on antioxidant activity during storage was presented in Table 4, which indicated significant differences between treatments. The highest was observed in T 7 (40% wheat flour+54% custard apple pulp+6% pomegranate peel, 32.03%), followed by T 10 (30.35%), while the lowest was in T 1 (100% wheat flour, 20.31% [7] .

The data on dietary fiber percentage (Table 5) indicated there was a significant difference between treatments. The highest dietary fibre (11.44%) was observed in T 10 (40% wheat flour+54% custard apple pulp powder+6% orange peel powder), followed by T 9 (10.34%), while the lowest (5.94%) was in T 1 . During storage, maximum dietary fibre (9.47%) was recorded on the 0 th day, which was on par with the 30 th day (9.30%), whereas minimum (8.99%) was observed on the 90 th day, comparable with the 60 th day (9.12%), indicating a gradual decrease over storage. Interaction effects showed that the highest dietary fibre (11.67%) was in T 10 on the 0 th day and the lowest (5.57%) in T 1 on the 90 th day. These findings agree with Belose et al. (2021) [2] and Zaker et al. (2016) [17] , who reported that orange peel incorporation enhances dietary fibre and improves the nutritional quality of cookies.

Various and different percentages of flours for cookies during storage influenced the ascorbic acid (Table 6). The highest ascorbic acid was recorded in T 10 (40% wheat flour+54% custard apple pulp+6% orange peel, 18.42 mg/100 g) followed by T 9 (16.20 mg/100 g), while the lowest was in T 1 (100% wheat flour, 4.34 mg/100 g). Ascorbic acid content gradually declined during storage from 10.79 mg/100 g on the 0 th day to 9.67 mg/100 g on the 90 th day. Interaction effects showed maximum content (19.03 mg/100 g) in T 10 on the 0 th day and minimum (3.70 mg/100 g) in T 1 on the 90 th day. Maximum ascorbic acid (vitamin C) in T 10 is attributed to orange peel powder, which naturally enriches cookies with ascorbic acid, consistent with Ojha and Thapa (2017).

Conclusion

Based on the results of the study, it can be concluded that the incorporation of pomegranate and orange peels can improve the antioxidant activity and dietary fibre content of cookies. The prepared cookies had good overall acceptability with good sensory quality and storability. Further, the cookies from the treatment T 5 (wheat flour 80%+custard apple pulp powder 14%+pomegranate peel powder 6%) had good storability upto 90 days at ambient conditions.

References

1. Asp NG, Johansson CG. Dietary fibre analysis. Nutrition Abstracts and Reviews Series A: Human and Experimental Clinical Nutrition. 1984;54:735-752.
2. Belose BB, Kotecha PM, Godase SN, Chavan UD. Studies on utilization of orange peel powder in the preparation of cookies. International Journal of Chemical Studies. 2021;9(1):1600-1602.
3. Braca A, De Tommasi N, Di Bari L, Pizza C, Politi M, Morelli I. Antioxidant principles from Bauhinia tarapotensis. Journal of Natural Products. 2001;64(7):892-895.
4. Braddock RJ. Handbook of Citrus By-Products and Processing Technology. New York: John Wiley & Sons; 1999. p. 1-7.
5. Gopalan C, Ramasastri BV, Balasubramanian SC. Nutritive Value of Indian Foods. Revised and updated by Narasinga Rao BS, Deosthale YG, Pant KC. Hyderabad: National Institute of Nutrition, Indian Council of Medical Research; 1989. p. 68.
6. Gorinstein S, Martín-Belloso O, Park YS, Haruenkit R, Lojek A, Číž M, et al. Comparison of some biochemical characteristics of different citrus fruits. Food Chemistry. 2001;74(3):309-315.
7. Ismail T, Akhtar S, Riaz M, Ismail A. Effect of pomegranate peel supplementation on nutritional, organoleptic and stability properties of cookies. International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition. 2014;65(6):661-666.
8. José FJS, Collado-Fernández M, Álvarez-Castellanos PP. Variation, during shelf life, of functional properties of biscuits enriched with fibers extracted from artichoke (Cynara scolymus L.). Nutrients. 2023;15(15):3329.
9. Khodifad BC, Kumar N, Vyas DK, Seth N, Prem M. Pre and post-harvest practices, processing and value addition of custard apple. International Journal of Food and Fermentation Technology. 2016;6(2):219-231.
10. Le-Bail P, Hesso N, Le-Bail A. Starch in baked products. In: Starch in Food. Cambridge: Woodhead Publishing; 2018. p. 595-632.
11. Ndife J, Kida F, Fagbemi S. Production and quality assessment of enriched cookies from whole wheat and full fat soya. European Journal of Food Science and Technology. 2014;2(1):19-28.
12. Ranganna S. Handbook of Analysis and Quality Control for Fruit and Vegetable Products. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill Education; 1986. p. 4-97.
13. Sadasivam S, Manickam A. Biochemical Methods for Agricultural Sciences. 6th ed. New Delhi: New Age International (P) Ltd.; 2008. p. 6-16.
14. Sakač M, Pestorić M, Mandić A, Mišan A, Nedeljković N, Jambrec D, et al. Shelf-life prediction of gluten-free rice-buckwheat cookies. Journal of Cereal Science. 2016;69:336-343.
15. Sobhan MM, Ahmmed R, Mazumder MNI, Alim MA. Evaluation of quality of biscuits prepared from wheat flour and cassava flour. International Journal of Natural and Social Sciences. 2014;1(2):12-20.
16. Sujirtha N, Mahendran T. Use of defatted coconut flour as a source of protein and dietary fibre in wheat biscuits. International Journal of Innovative Research in Science, Engineering and Technology. 2015;4(8):7344-7352.
17. Zaker MA, Sawate AR, Patil BM, Sadawarte SK. Studies on effect of orange peel powder incorporation on physical, nutritional and sensorial quality of cookies. International Journal of Engineering Research and Technology. 2016;7(5):2278-0181.