Physicochemical interactions of polydextrose for sucrose replacement in pound cake

The effect of sucrose on the physical properties of pound cake and batter with a total replacement by polydextrose was studied. The aim of this work was to replace sucrose in high-calorie-baked-products like pound cake, while preserving their typical high volume and soft textural characteristics. Rheological tests for analyzing the structural changes during shear stress as well as the texture parameters like firmness and adhesive force of batter were measured.Batter analysis revealed differences between the stability under shear stress as well as in texture when replacing sucrose by polydextrose, which resulted in a less stabile batter due to the interfacial behavior of the polydextrose and the batter components. In the case of the baked pound cake, polydextrose gave a similar effect on all the textural and crumb grain features. Significant correlations between batter- and cake-volume were found (rsuc. = 0.88; rpoly. = 0.96). Similar to a total sucrose reduction, the decrease of polydextrose resulted in a significant increase in the pores average sizes (rsuc. = 0.97; rpoly. = 0.95), which are typical for an irregular crumb. Staling was evaluated over an 18 day period and the polydextrose containing cakes showed similar behavior to the control products containing sucrose.In summary it was possible to replace sucrose with the polydextrose substitute, which allowed a significant reduction in calories (~ 10%), and at the same time showing similar quality characteristics to the sugar containing control.