USE OF DATE HONEY IN THE FORMULATION OF NUTRITIOUS CREAMY FOOD

Date is an important fruit crop in many Middle East countries. Date syrup is an important by-product of date. Clarified and purified date syrup is named date honey. It could be utilized as a replacer for sugar in preparing different food formulations. A new food formulation was processed, the essential ingredients of which being date honey, butter, hazelnut, dried skim milk, cocoa, starch, lecithin, and baking soda. Date honey is a good source of energy, and is relatively low in protein. Therefore, the addition of protein sources such as dried skim milk, nuts and other ingredients resulted in a nutritious formulated food containing 6.13% protein, 19.86% fat, 47.80% total sugar and was rich in certain mineral elements. A single stimulus-consumer test was conducted in order to evaluate the acceptability of the four formulations prepared by using different amounts of date honey and cocoa. The results indicated that formulation I containing 60 g date honey and 10 g cocoa was the most acceptable.