Potentiality of freeze-thaw treatment to produce soft textured aonla (Emblica officinalis) candies.

Aonla, due to its astringency, is converted into various processed products. Candy is the most popular of among them. Commercially available aonla candies in India are hard in texture. However, soft textured candies are preferred more over harder ones. Hence, study was undertaken to produce soft textured candies. Whole fruits and fruit segments were blanched in boiled water, frozen in domestic freezer for 12 h and thawed at room temperature (15-20 °C). Fresh, blanched, frozen and thawed samples were subjected to textural analysis. Some of the blanched and thawed segments were used to prepare candies and subjected to textural analysis. Results indicated that force-deformation behavior of all samples differed significantly. Fresh, blanched, thawed and frozen segments required 14.39, 0.84, 0.22 and 0.18 N force, respectively to compress them till 1 mm deformation. Similarly, peak force (5 mm deformation) was maximum in fresh segments (172.25 N) followed by blanched (8.77 N), frozen (1.06 N) and thawed (0.85 N). Peak force values for control and soft candies were 13.14 and 6.86 N, respectively. Based on results, it was found that freeze-thaw treatment significantly reduced the firmness of segments and produced soft textured candies.

Phytonutrient composition, antioxidant activity and acceptability of muffins incorporated with red capsicum pomace powder.

Enzymatic liquefaction (EL) ensures fast extraction and enhanced recovery of bioactives from red capsicum along with reduced degradation of these compounds remained in the pomace. Hence, red capsicum pomace obtained as byproduct after EL was freeze dried to produce capsicum pomace powder (CP). CP had almost 80% of bioactives (total carotenoids 91.23 ± 2.35 mg/100 g) and antioxidant activity (DPPH 1.61 ± 0.12 µmol TE/g) compared to fresh pomace. CP was further used to develop muffins. Different concentrations (2-10%) of CP were mixed in wheat flour for preparation of muffins. Wheat flour was fortified with CP at different levels (2-10%) and subsequently, effect of CP fortification on height, texture, bioactives and sensory quality of muffins was observed. CP fortification improved the quality in terms of color, flavor and texture. During storage, hardness values (34.42-32.56 N) showed decreasing trend with increase in CP content. Overall, 6% CP fortification was found most acceptable without causing significant change in porosity and crust uniformity of fortified muffins. Thus, present study demonstrated that fortification of muffins with 6% CP as functional ingredient offers an opportunity to develop quality muffins with enhanced antioxidant activity (DPPH 13.04 ± 0.02 µmol TE/g) and total carotenoids (3.46 ± 2.41 mg/100 g).