PREPARATION AND QUALITY EVALUATION OF COCONUT MILK INCORPORATED ICE CREAM

Abstract

Coconut ice cream is a vegan friendly frozen dessert prepared by using coconut milk as the major ingredient. The aim of this research was to develop the formulation for coconut milk incorporated ice cream and to study the effect of coconut milk and milk solid not fat (MSNF) on ice cream quality. Design expert was employed for formulating the recipe of ice cream. The obtained 9 formulations of coconut ice cream with varying levels of coconut milk and MSNF were prepared in lab, where the range of coconut milk and MSNF used were 0-100% and 10-12% respectively. The samples were subjected to sensory evaluation for consumer acceptability. The melting rates and overrun of ice cream were determined for all samples and the data subjected to response surface methodology to study the effect of formulation on physical quality. From sensory evaluation, 50% coconut milk and 10% MSNF were found to be significantly best (p<0.05). In most of the formulations, taste, color, body and overall acceptability were significantly affected (p<0.05) by variation in coconut milk and MSNF while aroma, taste and aftertaste were not affected greatly. From response study, 62.602% coconut milk and 10% MSNF was found to be the optimized formulation. Response surface plot showed that coconut milk had an overall positive and MSNF had a negative effect on the overrun. During the study of melting rate, it was observed that the rate decreased on increasing coconut milk and MSNF, thus improving the quality of ice cream. An overrun of 48.623% and melting rate of 0.578 g per 5 min was predicted by the software for the above-mentioned formulation of 62.602% coconut milk and 10% MSNF. Hence coconut ice cream can be prepared using milk and coconut milk with sensory, physical and chemical qualities similar to that of plain ice cream