Modernization and Shelf life extension of chhana based traditional sweetmeat by utilizing Theobroma cacoa, Vaccinia oxycoccos and different fruit powders

Abstract

India is pre-eminent in milk production and in consonance with the estimates of dairy industry, 50% of comprehensive milk produced in India is processed into traditional milk products like ghee, paneer, khoa, chhana, dahi and diverse range of milk sweetmeats. Chhana and chhana based confections like rasogolla, ras-malai and cham-cham etc are highly perishable and limited research efforts have been made to aggrandize their shelf life, resulting in waning of dairy output in terms of value addition. So, the plenary investigation was based on the development of an improved confection utilizing chhana and fruits powders as core material, Theobroma cacoa (dark chocolate) as coating of core material and Vaccinia oxycoccos (cranberry extract) as natural preservative in core material. Storage studies were performed on four different formulations marked as control, T1, T2 and T3 (described in material/ methodology section) at storage interval of 10 days up to day 40 of refrigeration preservation. Total phenolic counts, flavonoid counts, pH and water activity of all the formulations exhibited substantial decrease while TBA values, TPC and YMC increased significantly with the advancement of storage interval. All the samples got the microbial counts (TPC and YMC) above permissible limit between 30 and 40 days of storage, indicating shelf life of 30 days versus few days shelf life of traditional chhana based confections.