Tailoring alcoholic fillings for praline production with one-shot depositors

One-shot depositing is a state-of-the-art technique for the production of filled chocolate products, including pralines. One important pre-requisite for using this technique is that shell chocolate mass and filling need to have similar viscosity and density to allow sufficient processing. Aim of the study was to tailor the formulation of alcoholic fillings to ensure that (a) the fillings can be processed with one-shot depositors (high viscosity, approximately 5 Pa s) and (b) the fillings meet typical requirements for consumption (low viscosity, approximately 0.2 Pa s) by using modified starch as a thickener and starch-degrading enzymes for controlled starch hydrolysis. The results show that the first goal can be achieved by adjusting thickener concentration to the ethanol content of the filling and the alcoholic substrate (pure ethanol or wine distillate, 60%(v/v)). The controlled use of amylase-containing malt extract allows adjusting viscosity decay during processing and subsequent storage of the one-shot pralines.