engleski

Effect of mixture composition on physical properties of honey based cocoa powder

Honey is a natural biological product produced from nectar by honeybees. It contains glucose, fructose and water, as well as a mix of amino acids, vitamins, minerals, iron, zinc and antioxidants. In addition to its use as a natural sweetener, honey is used for medical purposes as an anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and antibacterial agent. Similar to honey, cocoa also has potent anti-inflammatory, antioxidant effects due to high content of polyphenols, but is low in sugar. In this work honey based cocoa powders containing different percentage of honey were produced and the effect of mixture composition on powders physical properties was analysed. Three honey based cocoa powders containing 60%, 50% and 40% of honey were produced by convective thin layer drying at 70˚C. The following physical properties of the cocoa powders were analysed: moisture content, bulk density, flowability, dispersibility, wettability and colour characteristics. The moisture content rises from 6.2% for the honey based cocoa powder containing 40% to 7.2% for powder containing 60% of honey. The flowability according to Hausner ratio is excellent for all three samples, showing that all of them are free-flowing powders, while Carr index values show that samples containing 50% and 60% honey are also free-flowing, while the sample with 40 % honey has lightly poorer flowability. Dispersibility was the best for the powder containing 60% honey, while wettability was the best for the powder containing 40% of honey. Colour values also changed with the addition of honey: powders with higher honey content had lower L* and b* values, and higher a* values. The obtained results show that by increasing the amount of honey in the mixture, moisture content rises. Flowability of all produced samples was good, regardless of the amount of honey added to the mixture. Dispersibility was the best for the powder containing the highest percentage of honey. It can be concluded that honey can be efficiently used as a natural sweetener for cocoa power production.

honey ; cocoa powder ; physical properties

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