Chickpea Aquafaba-Based Emulsions as a Fat Replacer in Pound Cake: Impact on Cake Properties and Sensory Analysis

Abstract

This study evaluates the use of chickpea aquafaba (CA)-based emulsions as a potential substitute for palm oil (PO), using pound cake as a case study. The CA was characterized in terms of pH (6.38 ± 0.01), density (1.02 g mL−1 ± 0.01), color, total soluble solids (6.3 ± 0.2 °Bx), total solids (5.7 ± 0.2%), thermal properties through DSC, and apparent viscosity (2.5 cPa·s−1 ± 0.02 at 300 s−1). Emulsions containing 35, 30, and 25% of CA were produced and applied to cake formulation C1, C2, and C3, respectively. The cake batter was evaluated in terms of apparent density (0.87–1.04 g1 cm−3), rheology, and pH (6.6–6.8). The cakes were evaluated for specific volume, baking loss (8.9–9.5%), color, and symmetry index on day 1, and firmness, water activity (aw), and moisture content (%), after 14 days of storage. The cakes produced with the emulsions were found to have slightly higher specific volume (2.3 cm3 g−1) when compared to the control (C4) produced with PO (2.2 cm3 g−1). The moisture and aw decreased and firmness increased during storage. In terms of formulation (i.e., day 1 for C1, C2, C3, and C4), there was no significant difference for moisture. As for aw, the C4 (0.90) was significantly different from the cakes produced with emulsions (0.91–0.92). The results from the sensory evaluation, carried out with 120 panelists, showed no statistically significant difference between C3 and C4 for the attributes of aroma, color, texture, flavor, and overall impression. Based on our results, it appears that the CA-based emulsions have the potential to replace PO in pound-cake recipes, reducing total and saturated fat.

Effect of hydrocolloid addition on cake prepared with aquafaba as egg substitute

“…These differences could be related to different equipment, technique or composition of the aquafaba used. While the crumb a* and b* values were similar to those measured by Karatay et al (2022) for pound cake made with chickpea aquafaba, their cakes were significantly darker (lower L*) than those reported here. In that study, however, the aquafaba was first used to create an emulsion to simulate palm oil, and their recipe included eggs and milk.…”

“…Consequently, the ΔE* values (Table 2) were not as high as for cake crusts and ranged between 1.7 and 6.9. As the Kabuli‐type chickpeas used in this study have beige‐brown seed coats, the differences in crumb colour could be a consequence of the intrinsic orange hue of aquafaba (also observed by other authors such as Karatay et al ., 2022). Crumb colour values were comparable to that of Mustafa et al .…”

Impact of Processing Method on AQF Functionality in Bakery Items

“…For the cake made with egg, the water activity was significantly (p ≤ 0.05) higher than water activities of other cakes except cake made with the freeze-dried AQF. The cakes prepared in this study tended to have lower moisture content and water activities compared to a previous report [27] but slightly higher moisture content compared to a sponge cake model [7]. Although not the same systems, lower moisture content was observed in gluten-free bread fortified with AQF [28].…”

“…The volume, symmetry, and uniformity index were not significantly (p > 0.05) different for the cakes, although the cake with tray-dried AQF had a slight indent compared to other cakes (Figure 4). Others [7,27] have found similar or slightly higher values for these cake properties. However, the differences in formulations likely contributed to differences in cake properties.…”

“…Thus, differences observed in cakes made with AQF compared to eggs likely lacked sufficient cell wall structure. In contrast, cakes made with varying AQF and fat levels tended to produce cakes with slightly higher specific volumes than cakes made with palm oil without AQF [27]. However, no differences in sensory scores between cakes made with and without AQF were observed.…”