USING PERSIMMONS (Diospyros kaki L) in Making FUNCTIONAL ICE CREAM

The healthy benefits of orange colored persimmons (Diospyros kaki L.) are highly related to their rich contents of total, soluble; and insoluble dietary fibers, total phenols, vitamin A, and C, and some minerals. The aim of this work was to verify the possibility of using persimmons as a natural function food agent in fruit ice cream manufacture. The fresh and boiled persimmons were added at levels of 5, 10, and 15% of ice cream mix. Changes in density, freezing point, viscosity, weight per gallon, titratable acidity, protein stability of ice cream mix as well as the overrun, melting resistance and sensory evaluation of the resultant ice cream were investigated. The obtained results revealed that the increase of the persimmons levels increased the acidity (%), specific gravity, weight per gallon in ice cream mix, as well as the decrease in the freezing point and protein stability of the mix. The overrun of ice cream decreased by the increase of the added persimmons. In general, both of melting resistances and specific gravity were increased by adding kaki fruit in ice cream mixes. From the data obtained, it could be recommended that ice cream can be produced with higher quality by adding 10%of persimmons in ice cream mix.