Quality Evaluation of Cookies Incorporated with Eggplant

Incorporation of eggplant in cookies is putting the effort to increase consumption of vegetables and fiber intake while reduce the calorie intake by lowering the butter content in cookies. The objective of this research was to investigate the incorporation of eggplant in cookies. Cookies were prepared by substituting butter with 0% (control), 25%, 50% and 75% of eggplant. Colour, water activity, texture, proximate composition (moisture, ash, crude fiber, fat, protein, total carbohydrate, and total energy value), total phenolic content, and antioxidant properties of cookies were evaluated. Sensory evaluation with a 9-points hedonic scale was conducted to evaluate the attributes of appearance, aroma, taste, texture and overall acceptability of cookies. A preference test was also performed to determine which cookies was preferred. Results showed that the incorporation of eggplant into cookies increased the lightness (L*) values, water activity, moisture content and hardness of cookies as compared to the control cookies. The incorporation of eggplant decreased 15.7 – 61.6% of fat content, 8.6 – 28.0% of ash content, 5.1% – 22.8% of total calories content, and 0 – 23.0% of total energy but obtained an average of 3 times higher fiber content than the control cookies. The 75% eggplant incorporated cookies had the lowest fat content at 10.56% but highest hardness at 1319.8 g significantly (p 0.05) for the aroma, taste and texture between control and 50% eggplant incorporated cookies. The overall acceptance of 50% eggplant cookies is slightly higher than control cookies although both cookies are equally preferred. Eggplant is potential to incorporate into cookies and adding the nutritional value of cookies.