Development and Evaluation of Calorie-Reduced Functional Cookies Enriched With Date Press Cake

Date press cake (DPC) is a by-product of date syrup (also known Dips) production with high nutritional content. However, it is still underutilized owing to the lack of knowledge about its health benefits and possible food applications. Therefore, the aim of the study was to prepare low-calorie fibre-rich functional cookies fortified with DPC. Different additions of DPC (5% and 10% on wheat flour basis) were added while sugar was reduced by 25% and 50% and replaced by 0.39 and 0.65 g Stevia, respectively. Cookies were analysed for their physicochemical and sensory attributes. The obtained results showed that moisture content, ash, and dietary fibre content significantly (p < 0.05) increased with increasing DPC amount, while sucrose content decreased significantly in treatments compared to the control. In addition, the hardness of 10% DPC-enriched cookies with 50% sugar reduction was slightly significantly higher than the control, while other treatments were not significantly different. The addition of DPC significantly decreased both L^∗ and b^∗, while increasing a^∗ of cookies. The results also revealed that the diameter, thickness, and spread ratio of the DPC-enriched cookies did not significantly differ from those of the control sample. On the other hand, the inclusion of DPC and Stevia significantly lowered the weight before baking of cookies, while the baking loss did not significantly change, apart from cookies with 5% DPC and 50% sugar reduction which showed a slight significant increase. The sensory evaluation results showed that cookies with 10% DPC inclusion and 25% sugar reduction received the highest appearance, texture, flavour, and overall acceptability scores compared to the control. However, the differences were not significant. These results indicate that the incorporation of DPC as a low-cost fibre-rich ingredient in cookies, along with the sugar reduction and Stevia substitution, improved the fibre content and nutritional value of cookies without compromising their physical or sensory attributes.