From Dairy Management Inc.™
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Adding kid-friendly flavors to cheese
5/15/06
This article was adapted from an article that originally appeared in the Vol. 17, Number 3 issue of Dairy Pipeline, which is published by the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
What if you were looking for a healthy dairy snack to put in your child’s lunch box? Perhaps cheese flavored to please children might be the way to go. With this scenario in mind, the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research (WCDR) developed a project, funded by Dairy Management Inc.TM (DMI), focusing on incorporating sweeteners and flavors into cheese. Led by John Jaeggi, the WCDR cheese applications group first worked with string cheese and then made processed cheese with flavors that kids go for, such as bubble gum, watermelon and green apple.
The group started by producing a strawberry-flavored string cheese. Given the pH range of string cheese, the cheese specialists were concerned about the pH ranges needed to produce a full strawberry flavor. Another concern was the chance that the thermophilic starter culture would ferment the sweeteners, possibly causing late gas formation in the cheese package. Incorporation points as well as the issue of retaining strawberry flavors in the cheese matrix were other variables the researchers considered.
Creating strawberry string cheese
To answer these questions, the group ran four strawberry-flavored string cheese trials that used different methodologies to incorporate sweeteners and strawberry flavoring. They were aiming for a cheese that tasted like strawberry yogurt but acted like string cheese. The first trials showed that the string cheese texture was better when standardizing milk to a casein-fat ratio matching regular string cheese. Thermophilic cultures did not seem to produce more gas in the packages than did the mesophilic cultures.
The researchers found that adding all ingredients to the stirred curd—at the time of salting and ingredient addition and before the molding step—was the best way to incorporate them into the cheese matrix. They were able to gauge the level of sweetener (sucrose) needed, as well as artificial sweetener (sucralose), to bring out flavor and sweetness in the string cheese. In addition, they were also able to verify that adding an emulsifying salt in addition to sodium chloride helped to incorporate the sweetener and flavor into the string cheese as opposed to adding sodium chloride only.
Although many questions were answered by trials, the researchers learned that the pH range of string cheese (about 5.10 to 5.30) limited the expression of strawberry flavor. When malic or citric acid was added, more strawberry flavor was noted as well as a nice aroma. However, due to the lower pH, these acids had a detrimental effect on the final string cheese texture; it was pasty and had little or no string. When no acid was added, the texture of the string cheese was good with nice string, but very little strawberry flavor.
Further flavor exploration
The group switched to trials using flavors detectable at pH ranges similar to those of the string cheese. The manufacturing parameters developed for the strawberry-flavored cheese were used to make cotton candy, bubble gum, green apple and banana-flavored cheese. Colors were added to the cheese milk to give vibrant colors. Although they had no effect on the cheese manufacturing process, the colors, as expected, had an effect on the color of the whey produced. Adding color directly to the cheese after mixing might be worth a try. Informal tasters easily identified all the cheese flavors, particularly cotton candy and bubble gum.
Companies interested in using this technology should contact the DMI Dairy Technical Support Hotline at 1-800-248-8829.
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