QUALITY EVALUATION OF COOKIES PRODUCED FROM BLENDS OF BANANA AND PROCESSED AFRICAN ALMONDS NUTS

Cookies are widely consumed bakery products around the world due to their affordability, convenience, long shelf life, and enjoyable taste. The broad objective of this study is to evaluate the quality of cookies produced from blends of banana and almond nut flour. Flour was produced from banana, raw almond nut, toasted almond nut and blanched almond nut and blended in the ratios 100:0, 18.52: 81.48 raw almond nut, 23:77 toasted almond nut and 17:83 blanched almond nut. While 100% wheat flour serve as control. The flour blends were subjected to functional properties determination while resultant cookies were subjected to physical properties, proximate composition and sensory properties using standard methods. Data collected were subjected to statistical analysis. The functional properties result showed that bulk density ranged from 0.60 to 0.84 g/ml, water absorption capacity ranged from 80.00 to 138.00%, foaming capacity ranged from 1.82 to 7.08%, foaming stability 1.05 to 3.95%, oil absorption capacity ranged from 86.50 to 98.50% while no significant (P>0.05) different was observed for gelation capacity. The physical properties results showed that weight, thickness, diameter and spread ranged between 7.10 – 9.01g, 1.28 – 1.78 cm, 4.55 – 5.00 cm and 2.55 – 3.90 respectively. The proximate composition result showed that moisture (2.60 – 8.35%), ash (1.10 – 2.67%), crude fibre (0.85 – 1.41%), fat (8.28 – 26.38%), protein (13.10 – 18.90%) and carbohydrates (44.27 – 66.32%). The mean sensory score on seven point hedonic scale for cookies sample showed that taste score ranged from 4.70 to 6.30, flavour ranged from 4.40 to 6.50, colour ranged from 5.20 to 6.40 and overall acceptability ranged from 5.00 to 6.80. This research indicates that protein enriched cookies from blends of banana and almonds were all acceptable