MODELLING THE PERFORMANCES OF TRADITIONAL AND INNOVATIVE FATS IN A PLUM CAKE FORMULATION

Finding alternatives to animal and saturated fats is an attractive challenge in bakery. In a first part of the research, effects of fat melting characteristics and fat quantity in a plum cake formulation were studied by a Central Composite Design (CCD), using palm oil/palm olein blends as fat. Cakes produced with butter (BC) or anhydrous butter (ABC) were taken as the references. Response surface models demonstrated that cake texture was significantly affected (p<0.01) both by fat content and percentage of olein in the fat blend, while volume was influenced (p<0.01) only by fat content. An optimized cake formulation (OF) was obtained. The rheology of OF, BC and ABC fats (and the corresponding batters) was studied, as well as cake characteristics during storage. Fat properties influenced batter viscoelastic behaviour and creaming performances. A higher content of unsaturated fatty acids improved baking performances: OF containing 19.7% olein in the fat blend attained good structural properties, suggesting that an aerated structure can be achieved even with a minimal solid fat content. In a second part, the effect of structured fats in plum cake was studied, using an organogel (OG) made of sunflower oil, with β-sitosterol and γ-oryzanol as gelators. OG showed higher G' with increasing gelators concentration. From the results of a CCD (with OG content in cake and gelators percentage in OG as factors), OG properties showed no significant impact (p>0.05) on the final cake, although the reference cake, produced with liquid sunflower oil, showed higher consistency (p>0.05). During storage trials, OG cakes showed slight different behaviour but further study on OG structuring in cake is needed.