Nutritional and sensory analysis of Parkia Biglobosa (Dawadawa) based cookies

Consumers demand for quality and nutritious foods is increasing, hence the need for food manufacturers to develop new nutritious and affordable products to meet their increasing demand by combining different ingredients. It is against this background that the study was performed to produce dawadawa based cookies with the view of improving the sensory and nutritional values of the products. In addition to a control sample using only wheat flour, five (5) different ring doughnut formulations were prepared using varying wheat and Parkia biglobosa (dawadawa) flour ratios. Sensory analysis using fifty untrained panel and proximate analyses were performed. The results revealed that greater significant differences in visual puffiness, appearance, texture/mouthfeel, moistness and smell acceptability were not observed among the products. Superimposition of the optimal areas having a score greater than 6.0 from each attribute was done to obtain an optimal formulation range. However, the sensory assessments of the products on the 9-point hedonic scale depicted that in all, product scores were more than 6.8 on the scale which is an indication that all sensory attributes were at least liked moderately in each case by the panel. The results depicted that, there was improvement on the nutritional contents (fat, carbohydrate, ash and fibre) of the formulations as the proximate analysis general showed an increase in value of 27.13±2.14% for fat and oil against a control sample of 23.71%, 37.24±3.79% carbohydrate, 1.40±0.25% ash and 2.85±0.97% fibre as against control sample of 33.16% carbohydrate, 0.95% ash and 0.90% fibre. However, there was a decrease in the protein content of the formulations (mean value of 10.44±0.64% against 17.22% for the control sample). Panels were able to correctly discriminate between the different samples in terms of the sensory attributes on the 9-point hedonic scale. However, the overall liking of the samples as perceived by the panel indicated that all products were acceptable; with Sample C (Wheat 320g: Dawadawa 80g) being the most preferred. Positive purchase intent was noticed among the panel hence offering new sales potential for the Parkia biglobosa based cookies.