Physico-chemical Properties Evaluation and Characteristics of Instant Cereal from Coconut Cake

The instant coconut cereal was developed using a mixture design and ten formulations of cereal were produced using coconut cake, corn flour and brown rice flour. The characteristics and functional properties of instant cereal from coconut cake on dietary fiber, physical and nutritional analysis were studied. Based on the simplex-centroid design, coconut cake had an improving effect significantly on the total dietary fiber (TDF), insoluble dietary fiber, and soluble dietary fiber but, not significantly in colour. The best mixture giving optimal total dietary fiber, insoluble dietary fiber, soluble dietary fiber was that containing 100% coconut cake flour. The result for TDF showed that the top three with the highest fibre content were cereal 3, 15.25%; followed by cereal 7, 11.75% and cereal 5, 10.05%. The addition of brown rice flour showed the highest water absorption index compared to whole corn flour and coconut flour. On the other hand, addition of coconut cake significantly increased the water solubility index compare to whole corn flour. The bulk density of the drum-dried instant cereal ranged between 0.32 and 0.36 g/cm3. The moisture content of ten formulations of cereal in the study was within the recommended range. The protein content of the cereal (g/100 g of dry matter) was the lowest in cereal 8 (6.96) and the highest in cereal 3 (8.83). It also shows that the ten formulations of coconut cereal has an array of nutritional properties that varied according to flour proportion.