Designing Indulgent Desserts
February 1997 -- Design Elements
By: John Spizzirri
Contributing Editor
Face it -- dessert means fantasy. A little escape from the rigors of the world. Perhaps consumers are bored with Weight Watchers, or maybe they just want to take a break from their hectic schedules. In either case, the mere image of a dessert often sends them into a headlong dive into a no holds barred, calorie-laden, sugar-saturated treat.
But not all desserts are created equal. There are a number of factors that separate those products we deem standard or generic brands from those we identify as superpremium, indulgent desserts. So what constitutes an indulgent dessert?
In layman's terms, it is a product that has 'decadence' piped all over it and a price tag to match. It is rich with mousses, custards and creams, and heavy on the chocolate. Typically, it would also include ingredients that are perceived as high-end products, like hazelnuts or macadamias.
"Another thing that distinguishes these products from your standard fare offering is the way they look. The eye appeal is much more involved in indulgent desserts," says Chris Ingegno, Culinary Concepts, Chicago.
From an industry perspective, such desserts are the product of dedication to quality. In many cases, particularly with ice creams and frozen desserts, this may mean that the quality of the ingredients -- chocolate liquor rather than cocoa powder, real fruit chunks in place of a variegate, cane sugar instead of corn sweeteners -- results in a higher price for the indulgence. It appears, however, that many consumers are willing to pay the price as long as their ice cream 'screams' butterfat, their chocolate is in chunks, and their fruit is in pieces, not ribbons.
At the same time, comfort foods are making a comeback, and many of these foods are indulgent, says Ingegno. Flavor houses like Universal and Virginia Dare suggest that this trend is made evident by the return of manufacturers to the more traditional caramels and thick fudges in dessert items. These products are typically baked goods that have been embellished upon, and might include brownie-type desserts made with chocolate chunks and nuts and drizzled with caramel.
Overall, most experts agree that behind the creation of any superpremium indulgent dessert there must be an unwillingness to compromise, and this must survive the entire dessert-making process, from formulation to final packaging and shipping.
The price of excellence
Tradition isn't a term used loosely to define the return of the indulgent desserts popular when we were children. Tradition is practiced in many of the facilities that produce superpremium desserts for both the grocer's freezer and foodservice.
Tradition costs a little extra, but this cost is a product of quality, associated in this case with both the ingredients that go into such a dessert and the extra time it takes to process those ingredients into an eye-pleasing, gastronomic delight.
"Quality is just paramount to having a successful product," says one source familiar with the baked goods industry. "You really have to put the time and effort into getting it right the first time, and I think you'd be surprised at what painstaking care is actually taken to put these indulgent-type products together."
From a processor's standpoint, superpremium desserts often require much more labor-intensive procedures. Standard processing of a cake might incorporate a mixture of hand and mechanical finishing, or the process may be entirely automated. However, much of the work done on superpremium baked goods is done by hand. For example, inclusions like chocolate chunks and nuts are often hand-mixed to keep the pieces from becoming overly macerated during mechanical operations.
Certain cakes and tortes require the delicate application of glazes, fillings, frostings and elegant decorations. These might include items that are considered indulgent and high-end, such as marzipan trim, which is hand-processed and applied, or chocolate swirl filigrees that can be purchased pre-processed and applied as decoration. This finishing, or garnishing, of indulgent baked goods is much more involved than that used for standard fare and plays a key role in creating the visual appeal that separates indulgent from standard, says Ingegno.
She offers the example of a school lunch room, where brownies are produced as large sheets, quickly covered with a cream cheese frosting, portioned and served. By contrast, manufacturers of a superpremium brownie will embellish the frosting. They will make the frosting richer, and pipe it on the dessert rather than slather it on with an offset spatula. Then they may go a step further and drizzle chocolate or pipe a decoration on top of the frosting.
Beyond visual appeal, hand preparation can protect against needless scrap, says one source. "With all of those expensive ingredients, if a serious mistake is made, the cost will kill you. Some of those offerings may cost upwards of $15 to $20 apiece."
The ingredients
Flour, leavening agents, butter, eggs and some form of liquid are the standard ingredients of most baked goods, no matter what their retail value. Ingredients that are added later, and the way they are added move a baked good into the indulgent category.
Ingredient quality is one of the keys to making any product good. But quality shouldn't necessarily be confused with cost. In many cases, quality implies consistency. This consistency may mean always buying ingredients from the same vendor or always using the same ingredients, such as butter instead of margarine, or fresh eggs instead of frozen eggs or an egg substitute.
Again, such differences may not make the product indulgent, per se, but the extra time it takes to crack fresh eggs adds cost for both the manufacturer and the consumer.
Beside the extra cost or labor, these types of ingredients can bring about a number of technical problems. For example, not everyone agrees about the effects of freezing on eggs. While some manufacturers swear by the process, others say that you use lose some functionality. In cakes, fresh eggs are thought to provide better uniformity and lift. Using real eggs can create handling, storage and potential microbial problems, however.
Butter, preferably unsalted, is an all-important ingredient in many indulgent baked products. While it can be substituted with margarine or straight vegetable shortening, butter offers an edge in mouthfeel and flavor that helps define a superpremium dessert. Butter also tends to provide a different end result than margarine, particularly when it is used in pastries and crusts. Both contain about the same amount of fat or oil, but the vegetable fat used in margarine tends to form in small globules or spheres, while the animal fat found in butter forms crystals. This crystal structure is layered flat, almost like shingles. Because of the physical shape of the fat crystals, butter tends to spread and layer more easily and uniformly, forming nice flaky layers with richer flavor notes.
Fat, fat, fat
Indulgent desserts invariably contain fat. Whether it is used in baked goods or ice cream and frozen desserts, and whether the source is butter, shortening, eggs or creams, fat is an essential factor in creating the taste, mouthfeel and overall texture of any dessert we call indulgent.
Not only does fat help blend flavors, it helps accentuate them. Eggs and butter, for example, produce a background for flavors to be evenly blended against, and they can have a mellowing effect on the entire flavor profile. This eliminates flavor spikes that make one or several ingredients stand out too harshly over the others. In butter, diacetyl makes the most significant contribution to flavor. "You can have products that have cocoa powder in them, which is just chocolate with the fat removed to a high degree," says our industry source. "Though the real flavoring component is going to be the cocoa, the butter part of it, when mixed with the cocoa, really makes the chocolate flavor stand out on your taste buds."
The majority of fat in cakes comes from the butters or shortenings used to make frostings and icings. In superpremium ice cream, fat comes from milk and cream. The best source of butterfat for any type of upscale product is fresh heavy cream, which runs 36% to 40% butterfat. Availability and market pricing play a role in usage because the price tends to fluctuate.
Plastic cream, also referred to as manufacturing cream, is the next best source, and can be purchased fresh or frozen. Submitted to double separation, plastic creams provide upwards of 55% butterfat. While the minimum legal standards have changed, a true ice cream was originally required to contain at least 10% butterfat, a level maintained by the majority of the standard or store brand ice creams. Superpremiums range from 14% to 16% butterfat, with Häagen-Dazs leading the pack with 16% to18% butterfat and a low overrun of 20%. Low butterfat and the total solids content of 35% to 37% found in most store brands usually results in weaker body, reduced creaminess and faster melt down. These products also may be icier because they are lower in solids and higher in moisture than superpremium ice creams. Lower solids also increase the product's freezing point. "So, you have less solids, less fat, to insulate your mouth," says David Brown, senior extension associate, department of food science, Cornell University. "All of those things that insulate your mouth aren't there, and all of the things that make you aware of it are, like more water."
Conversely, all of the sensory aspects associated with a superpremium ice cream shout indulgence. Visually, the product will appear richer when it is scooped into a bowl. Texturally, it will be heavier and creamier, almost coating the mouth because of the higher fat level.
On the manufacturing end, more sometimes means less. Higher butterfat content may reduce the need for stabilizers. Low overrun and higher overall solids significantly reduce the possibility of water migration, because there is, literally, no place for the water to go.
This same system also reduces the need for emulsifiers. High-fat mixes typically do have lower overrun, so there is less air to hold within the mix. More importantly, these products also contain more of the fat globule membranes that make available the hydrophilic and hydrophobic structures required for emulsion of the fat and water molecules. But too much emulsifier in the fat can start creating functional problems. During the mixing phase, the fat could precipitate out into chunks, as when churning butter, and the ice cream won't freeze properly.
The cow's contribution
The fresh milk component of any frozen dairy dessert is going to provide the first source of nonfat milk solids, though not enough. The product must be fortified with additional milk solids to meet compositional and legal requirements. Condensed skim milk and condensed whole milk are excellent sources of nonfat milk solids. The condensed whole milk, in particular, provides both a source of fat and nonfat milk solids.
Powdered skim is another good source of solids for making indulgent, premium desserts, especially for marketers who want to promote a clean ingredient label.
Egg yolk solids are also used as a source of solids in some of the superpremiums, again especially by companies that want to promote a clean ingredient label. At levels below 1.4%, egg yolk solids are considered emulsifiers for fat because of their inherent lecithin content, and they also act as natural stabilizers. Egg yolk solids levels above 1.4% are needed for making custard or "French" ice cream.
Standards for ice cream manufacture prescribe a level of nonfat milk solids dependent on the level of butterfat in the dessert. The minimum requirement for nonfat milk solids is 10% in ice cream containing 10% or more butterfat. But as the fat content increases, the percentage of nonfat milk solids can be reduced one-for-one to a minimum of 6%.
The creation of an indulgent ice cream with 18% butterfat requires a reduction of nonfat milk solids to 7% or 8%. Anything higher increases viscosity disproportionately.
"From a processing point of view, as your fats and solids get up into the high end of composition, you don't want to exceed 42% total solids, though some of the high-fat formulations may reach as high as 43% or 44%," says Brown. "Now it becomes difficult for pumping or running product through your presses because the back pressures become horrendous. Even if you've plated the presses with a wider gap to handle viscosity, you can still run into problems."
Timing temperatures
The fat and solids level of a dairy product determines its minimum time-temperature relationship for pasteurization. The higher fat content of ice creams requires higher temperatures at a longer cycle to reach all the bacteria trapped between the fat globules.
The individual process is dependent on the particular stabilizing system used and may be altered to adjust for flavor development or co-precipitation of proteins, such as whey protein with casein, which increases viscosity.
Traditionally, manufacturers pasteurize the ice cream mix at 155°F for 30 minutes. Then it is cooled and allowed to equilibrate for 24 hours to allow for a better freeze and better control of overrun.
The efficiency of today's stabilizer systems and their low usage or absence in superpremium ice creams allows manufacturers to run short-time pasteurizations of 175°F for 25 seconds. The mix should still be aged for at least four hours to allow for the latent heat of the butterfat to disperse and allow it to return to the correct proportions of crystallized and liquid fat. "The more butterfat, the more latent heat of crystallization you're going to have," notes Brown. "That may affect the processing time or the refrigeration supply necessary to remove that heat."
If not aged properly, the latent heat of the butterfat may be released in the hardening tunnel, increasing the temperature of the packaged product. While it may rise only a few degrees, this difference may be enough to revert ice crystals back to water. Refreezing will then produce larger ice crystals and change the ice cream's texture.
The flavors of indulgence
What would an indulgent dessert be without icing cascading down its flanks or whipped creams piled high or smooth, sweet glazes reflecting the decadence of the piece? Then again, what would these items be without the aid of vanilla and chocolate?
Vanilla is one of the most important overall flavors used in both bakery products and ice cream. It also serves and performs as a flavor enhancer, especially in premium and superpremium products, where it is commonly used in conjunction with cocoa or chocolate liquor in ice cream to provide a richer, fuller taste.
Pure bourbon vanilla from Madagascar, if made properly, is considered the finest vanilla available. It projects a very clean flavor, and it won't over-flavor as artificial flavors can.
If the concentration of an artificial flavor increases beyond a certain point, the product may wind up with an unpleasant taste, because the flavor components begin to spike and become objectionable. With pure bourbon vanilla, you come to a point of diminishing returns, where the addition of more vanilla does not give you a corresponding return of flavor impact. There's a leveling out, and it doesn't produce any objectionable flavors.
Fat content dictates the amount of vanilla used, just as it does other flavors in products that contain any degree of fat, notes Carl Hetzel, senior vice president, Virginia Dare Flavors, Brooklyn, NY.
"In a 10% butterfat product with a two-fold pure vanilla, you would use 40 oz. for 100 gal. of mix," he says. "As the fat content goes up, say to 12%, we would suggest, as a rule of thumb that you use a proportionately higher concentration of that vanilla."
A higher fat content tends to repress the vanilla flavor sensation, so superpremiums tend to use concentrations that are more than proportionately higher. The proportional factor works up to about 12% butterfat, not only with vanilla, but with other flavors as well. When the product reaches the 15% to 16% range, it's not unusual for manufacturers to use concentrations that are over 100 oz. for 100 gal. of mix.
For chocolate lovers
Any chocolate ingredient going into a premium indulgent dessert has different flavors and different textures, says Ed Minson, technology and legal information manager, Ambrosia Chocolate, Milwaukee.
There is no one chocolate flavor, but rather a very broad range of flavors. The difference between one company's chocolate coating and another's will be determined by the types of cocoa beans that are used and the flavoring added to them. For instance, beans from different parts of the world contribute different flavor attributes; or when formulating the chocolate, company A might use pure vanilla, company B, vanillin.
Texture also plays a significant role, especially in high-quality products that require smoother texture and better meltdown. For chocolate, texture is mainly a function of particle size. Chocolate consists of solid particles suspended in oil, or fat. The finer the grind, the more difficult and expensive the process becomes.
Grinding these suspended particles dramatically increases the surface area into which fat can soak. But there is a price to pay for smooth texture in terms of viscosity. Free fat allows the chocolate to flow more freely, allowing the processor to more easily process it, pump it, mold and pour it, and get rid of the air bubbles. Increasing the surface area of the particles means that there is more fat that is soaking into the particles, making it unavailable for flow. This can be countered by adding more cocoa butter, usually 1% to 3% more, and adding lecithin to achieve the desired viscosity.
Total fat content contributes to more than just the flow properties. It provides richer, smoother mouthfeel and, in the case of a pure chocolate cocoa butter-based product, it adds cost.
Cocoa butter also adds processing time "because it does not solidify in a stable form unless you do some temperature manipulations to influence what crystal form the fat solidifies into. So the pure chocolate is much more sensitive than some of the compounds," says Minson.
Processing also becomes more difficult for ice cream manufacturers who are creating indulgent coatings. Traditional ice cream bars have a very thin coating, but a product like a Dove bar, for example, has what amounts to a candy-bar coating. The thickness of the coating is largely based on the fat content -- this controls the viscosity. The more fat it contains, the thinner a coating becomes, so that a coating with 70% fat is fairly thin once it is melted. A 3-oz. ice cream novelty may end up with 10 to 15 grams of coating with a standard fat level. A coating containing 55% fat may result in 30 grams of coating on the same product, because it's thicker at the same temperature. And even though the coating has a lower percentage of fat, the finished product ends up with more fat because it has more coating per piece.
It's also much harder to use the thicker, more indulgent coatings on ice cream novelties -- because there is more coating to solidify, it's harder to dry. Some manufacturing lines use ambient temperatures, and some of those rooms can be relatively hot. So the manufacturer is relying on the cold of the ice cream to cool down and solidify the fat in the coating. With a thicker coating, there is more heat to be removed, so relying on the ice cream for cooling may not be an option.
Other ingredients make a difference as well. Less expensive novelties tend to contain coconut oil, a lot of sugar and a little bit of cocoa powder, but indulgent coatings rely on more chocolate liquor for a balanced taste, and more expensive fats like cocoa butter or butter fat. These fats help create the right flavor impact as well as have a melt profile that consumers associate with high-quality chocolate.
Inclusions
While an indulgent dessert isn't defined by whether or not it contains heavy-duty portions of chocolate chips or nuts, inclusions do provide incredible visual appeal to both baked goods and ice creams, while offering the consumer the ultimate in texture and taste sensation.
At Ben & Jerry's, indulgence is Texas-sized -- everything is bigger. The company's ice creams corner the market in mouthfeel by utilizing incredible chunks of candies, fruits and one of the current contenders for top mix-in, chocolate-chip cookie dough. Portions aside, Ben and Jerry's pays for those ingredients (as do their customers) that will perform the duties for which they were originally intended: crisp nut meats and chocolates rich in cocoa butter that set up hard in product and crunch hard every serving.
You don't have to overwhelm to provide a certain degree of indulgence, although quality and quantity certainly are factors. You can indulge the consumer with a combination of inclusions, such as a fudge variegate and brownies, or a nut meat and a caramel.
The purpose of inclusions in any indulgent dessert is to overstate, both in the additional texture provided by the inclusion and the additional flavor notes it may impart. Oreo cookies, for example, provide an amalgam of textures because of the combination base cake and cream filling. It also adds something of an Oreo cookie background flavor to the mix beyond the inclusion. But not every stand-alone ingredient can be successful as an ice cream inclusion due to the high-moisture, high-fat frozen environment. (Food Product Design looked at many of the issues surrounding the formulation and use of ice cream inclusions in July 1994's Design Element "Ice Cream Inclusions".
"A lot of baked items kind of break up and leach into the background. That is a very positive attribute," says Mitch Moran, marketing director, Universal Flavors, Wheaton, IL. "But baked items need a lot of modification. Cookies, by their very nature, have a lot of starch and other ingredients that tend to absorb water, making them mushy. So you're typically working with things that have a lot of barrier properties -- some kind of oil coating, chocolate or candy coating -- to try to prevent that water migration into the baked good and keep its center intact. "And any time water is not frozen, you get that threat of migration. Frost-free freezers in stores warm up two or three times a day. By continually freezing and unfreezing these ice crystals, they build in size and you also build the probability that your (baked goods) inclusions are going to get soggy."
Inclusions impose additional problems when the mix and inclusion have different specific gravities, making it more difficult to evenly blend them. Heavier products can sink to the bottom, or light pieces may float to the top of a mix or batter. Indulgent, baked products are often hand-fed chunks of nuts or chocolates and mixed manually to guarantee that the pieces remain intact and are dispersed evenly.
According to Brown, the practice of using larger inclusions may not be such a bad idea from a dispersion standpoint. "Getting uniformity with a lot of little chips through a high viscosity product is going to be more difficult than if you're using larger chunks," he says. "If I've got 10 chips to disperse in one square inch versus two, which might be much larger, it's going to be easier to get what appears to be uniform dispersion with the two big pieces. The smaller ones will be more obvious if they're all clumped together."
Au naturel
An all-natural label suggests minimal ingredients, which may work in ice creams but is not likely to work in a commercial version of an indulgent cake or other baked product. Stabilizers typically spoil the party, especially when whipped creams and icings define a product's indulgence level. However, these are the types of components that often require some stabilization, particularly for desserts that go through freeze/thaw cycles. If that is the case, the product designer is left with the dilemma of developing a stabilized product that meets customer expectations as well as the claims on the label.
"The other problem is that when you think about all natural baked goods, you're thinking of oat brans and whole wheats, things that aren't necessarily indulgent," says Ingegno. "I think that the 'all natural' and 'healthy' descriptors for baked goods often release a trigger in people's minds that says cardboard. "Something that's very big in baked goods right now is utilizing prune pastes as a fat replacer. They act as a sweetener, they have the mouthfeel and the consistency of the fat, and this allows them to call their product 'all natural.'"
With ice cream, on the other hand, a clean label may attract those consumers who are teetering on the brink of decadence, yet who feel that natural foods are a must for a healthy lifestyle. For them, indulgence is as close as the grocer's freezer, where many of the superpremium, indulgent desserts pursue a clean label, or as close to one as possible.
High-fat ice creams that incorporate higher overruns may use some carrageenan and a few basic components to keep the mix together before freezing, Moran says, but they're not really used to act as a stabilizer in the finished product. (The specific functional characteristics are outlined in greater detail in "The Ice Cream Evolution", Food Product Design, October 1996.)
Some high-end manufacturers use eggs in their mixes, which provide a natural source of mono- and di-glycerides, and act as an emulsifier. While this allows them to call the product all natural, it is also indulgent because of the increased ingredient cost.
Products with lower fat contents require some type of stabilizer system to maintain their integrity. By choosing the appropriate medium, a product can still carry all natural labeling. One ingredient to look at is cultured skim milk, also known as cultured buttermilk. It is possible to select a type of culture for the buttermilk that produces an extracellular polysaccharide. This polysaccharide can then act as a stabilizer and help to maintain moistness.
"Xanthan is produced by microorganisms," says Brown. "If I grow a culture in skim milk that produces xanthan, then dry that down and use it as an ingredient, then I've got a stabilizer, but I don't have to call it that. So it's very functional and it gives me a good upscale image."
Heat is another stabilizer, he adds, because it will denature the proteins that are present in the formula. Heat used in combination with cultures or egg yolk can not only act as a stabilizer, but may also create a structure that performs like an emulsifier.
Colors also play a role in defining what products can be labeled all natural. According to Moran, there are no colors available on the market that can be considered natural. There are colors that are derived from natural sources, like turmeric and beet color, but you are not allowed to market them as natural, he says. So all natural ice cream lines are less colorful than those that do not make that claim.
But when it comes right down to it, there's no real secret to the formulation or processing of superpremium brands, notes Moran. "They just use good simple products, and they use them well," he adds. "That's expensive to do."
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