A Comparison of the Mechanical and Sensory Properties of Baked and Extruded Confectionery Products

Traditional baking is the most common way of producing confectionery wafers, however over the past few decades, the extrusion process has become an increasingly important food manufacturing method and is commonly used in the manufacturing of breakfast cereals and filled snack products. This study aims to characterise products made via each of these manufacturing processes in order to understand the important parameters involved in the resulting texture of confectionery products such as wafers. Both of the named processes result in brittle, cellular foams comprising of cell walls and cell pores which may contain some of the confectionery filling. The mechanical response of the cell wall material and the geometry of the products influence the consumer perception and preference. X-Ray micro tomography (XRT) was used to generate geometry of the microstructure which was then fed to Finite Element (FE) for numerical analysis on both products. The FE models were used to determine properties such as solid modulus...