Faculty of Food Science and Technology, Universiti Putra Malaysia
Abstract
Dadih is a favourable dessert in South East Asia due to its appealing sweet taste and jellies appearance. The sweet taste is from sugar (sucrose) content, and in order to reduce the sucrose, it was substituted with xylitol. Xylitol can provides intense sweetness with less calories and lower water activity, which potentially contribute to higher microbial stability thus giving longer shelf life. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of xylitol substituted on dadih safety and sensory qualities. Dadih was prepared by replacing sucrose with xylitol composition in the range of 0 – 100% and at two levels of cooking times (15 and 20 minutes). Safety analysis were performed using total plate count (TPC) and water activity (aw) analysis. For sensory analysis, seven attributes were evaluated (appearance, colour, hardness, elasticity, taste, sweetness, and overall acceptability) based on the 9-hedonic scale. From the findings, dadih samples with total sucrose (0%) were observed to be contaminated faster compared to total xylitol (100%). Dadih with xylitol is more stable with prolonged shelf life. From sensory analysis, dadih sample prepared with shorter cooking time (15 minutes) was selected as more favourable with overall acceptability score between 72 - 85%. More than 70% of the score for dadih with xylitol substitute was above ‘slightly like’, which indicates a promising future to produce xylitol substitute dadih. The outcome of this study has shown that xylitol is potentially to be utilize as sugar substitute for dadih production
