Nutritional Composition and Acceptability of Cookies Made from Wheat Flour and Germinated Sesame (Sesamum indicum) Flour Blends

Aims: To evaluate the nutritional and sensory attributes of wheat-sesame supplemented cookies.
Study Design: Multifactorial Design.
Place and Duration of Study: Food Science and Technology Department, Federal University Technology, Akure, Ondo State, Nigeria between March 2011 2012.
Methodology: Sesame seeds were subjected to four days germination under closely monitored conditions of temperature and relative humidity. The sprouts were derooted, oven dried at 60ºC for 6hrs, milled, sifted, packaged and stored at 4ºC. Flour was analysed for proximate, antinutrients and amino acid compositions. Germinated sesame flour was used to supplement wheat flour at 5, 10 and 15% levels to bake cookies which were assayed for proximate composition, physical attributes and sensory evaluation.
Results: Germination increased protein content of sesame from 26.23% to 32.91% and reduced fat content from 52.7% to 23.22%. It also yielded positive effect on the antinutrients. Phytic acid content reduced from 31.59mg/g in raw seed to 16.20mg/g in germinated seed. Sesame seeds are rich in both essential and non-essential amino acids, processing significantly increased the values with leucine, methionine, lysine, phenylalanine, threonine and valine values higher than the recommended daily allowance. Protein, fat and ash content of wheat-sesame cookies increased with increase in sesame supplementation, 5% sesame cookies had 17.27%, 21.73% and 2.35% respectively while 15% sesame cookies had 18.80%, 25.02% and 4.21% respectively. The carbohydrate content on the other hand decreased with increase in sesame supplementation from 53.26 to 48.26%. 95:5% wheat-sesame cookies compared favourably with the control in terms of overall acceptability.
Conclusion: Sensory evaluation result revealed that the cookies supplemented with 5% germinated sesame flour was well accepted and not significantly different from the control (100% wheat flour cookies) in terms of aroma, taste and overall acceptability.