New flavour bars with cherry, almond and honey

Abstract

Snacks are commonly eaten in western societies and, because of that, have a non-negligible effect on consumers’ health. The main objective of this work was to develop and optimize a snack formulation with sweet cherry, an important crop from the Portuguese region of Beira Interior and which has a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI). The experimental design and the optimization process were based on the Response Surface Methodology. In order to achieve that, a factorial design was implemented with three factors (almond and honey content, and baking time) and five response variables (water activity, antioxidant activity, mesophilic count, flavour and texture), and three repetitions of the central point. The optimization resulted in a formulation with 50 g 100 g-1 of sweet cherry, 35 g 100 g-1 of almond, 15 g 100 g-1 of honey, baked in the oven at 120 ºC for 13 min. The nutritional analysis showed that this product could be labelled with some nutritional claims, such as “low saturated fat”, “with no added sugar”, “salt free” and “source of fibre”.