Want a gluten-free extra moist Devil’s Food cake mix? Palsgaard has created a gluten-free, powdered retail formulation for Devil’s food cake so good that it is turning commonly accepted ideas about dry, boring gluten-free cakes to shame. And it has enabled bakers to bring a popular cake in its best American-style quality to the rest of the world. By Arne Pedersen and Leif Jakobsen When Palsgaard’s R&D people decide to take up a marketplace challenge, we don’t necessarily like to choose the easy options. So when we were asked if we could develop a deliciously moist Devil’s food cake from a powdered retail mix, we set the bar as high as we could – and delivered not just right quality of cake as requested, but a gluten-free recipe that can just as easily be produced in the US, Europe or anywhere else in the world for that matter. MIXING IT UP Since Betty Crocker launched the first popular baking mixes some 70 years ago, the market has been through a growth explosion. Today, the mix business is a USD 2 billionplus, largely convenience-driven consumer market. Mixes themselves have changed, too, with the best products able to deliver a satisfying eating experience most of the time. There is, however, still a noticeable difference between a cake produced using a powdered mix and a traditionally baked cake. And achieving batch-to-batch stability when producing such cakes has remained an elusive target. For Palsgaard, helping cake mix manufacturers to close this eating experience gap has long been a preciously held aim. And it’s an aim that has recently become more achievable than ever before. Recent, high-profile successes with emulsifier systems for microwave cakes, for example, have boosted confidence among our food scientists. So much so, in fact, that 1
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