The Effect of Balangu Seed Gum (Lallemantia royleana) onImproving the Physicochemical, Textural and SensoryCharacteristics of Sponge Cake Enriched with PumpkinPowder

Pumpkin powder is used because of its high nutritional value, highly desirableflavor, sweetness and appropriate color to improve the quality of bakery products and alltypes of cakes. In this study, Balangu seed gum was used to improve the characteristics ofpumpkin cake.

Firstly, the pumpkin cake batter containing different percentages ofBalangu seed gum (at four levels 0, 0.5, 1, and 1.5%) was prepared and their viscosity wasmeasured. The cakes were then cooked and the physicochemical properties including weight,ash, moisture, volume, density, crumb color, texture and sensory characteristics weremeasured.

Pumpkin cakes batter was a non-newtonian fluid and shear-dependent and timedependenttype. By increasing Balangu seed gum percentage in pumpkin cake formulation,the viscosity of batter increased (p<0.05). By increasing the Balangu seed gum from 0 to 1.5%, pumpkin cakes batters viscosity at shear rate of 40 s-1 ware increased from 16.93 to 32.21Pa.s (p<0.05). The moisture content and volume of cakes were increased by increasing gumpercentage (p<0.05). The increases of Balangu gum increased the brightness of cakes due toincreasing volume, in addition yellow colour of the samples decreased (p<0.05).

The increase in gum content, the firmness of the cakes was reduced, but theamount of springness, cohesiveness and resilience of the cakes increased significantly due tothe formation of prper and soft texture by gum in the cakes (p<0.05). The L*, a* and b*indexes for sample containing 1.5 % gum were 85.25, 3.491 and 50.25, respectively. Pumpkincake containing 1.5% Balangu seed gum had significantly more acceptability than othersamples (p<0.05).