Final Project Written Report

Effect of Lipid Type and Level on Fudge Consistency

TaraLyn Jones and Meredith Bunderson

Project Objective: To investigate the effect that lipid level and lipid type have on the

consistency of the fudge at room temperature.

Materials and Methods: Butter is the lipid source used in the recipe, and also has the

characteristics of being solid in the refrigerator and soft at room temperature. Butter is most

likely to be a contributing factor to this problem because of how much fat is in the product. The

hypothesis is that changing the type or amount of lipid will allow the fudge to maintain its

stability at room temperature. Two different independent variables will be tested in this

experiment. First by reducing the amount of butter from cup to cup and secondly by using

different lipid types. These types are: Butter, Margarine and shortening. These lipid types all

have different melting points; Butter melts at 90 degrees, margarine at 95 degrees, and

shortening at 117 degrees. The dependent variable maintaining the stability of the fudge at room

temperature. To eliminate possibilities of food borne illnesses liquid pasteurized egg will be

substituted for a whole egg, since the fudge is not heated at the end of the process. Some possible

extraneous variables could be that the shortening has zero water content. To eliminate this we

decided to add 3 teaspoons of water per cup of shortening to keep consistent. Another variable

could be the amount of time the fudge is in the refrigerator. To insure each batch has an equal

amount of time cooling they will be placed into the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Control recipe: 1 tsp vanilla

cup butter 2 eggs

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips 4 cups of powdered sugar

First melt the butter and chocolate chips in a saucepan over medium-low heat. After it has all

melted, remove it from the heat, add the eggs and stir rapidly with a wire whisk. Do this very

quickly to ensure that the eggs are not scrambled into the fudge. Then add the vanilla and

powdered sugar one cup at a time. Pour into sprayed 8x8 cake pan and refrigerate immediately

for 30 minutes. Make four batches of this recipe. One batch will be the control, in the second

batch the butter needs to be replaced with margarine (1/2 cup). The third batch the butter is

replaced with shortening (1/2 cup + 3 tsp water), and the last batch, reduce the amount of butter

to cup. Have at least two people to make the fudge so that each batch is made as quickly as

possible. Place each batch into the refrigerator at the same time.

Sample test: While fudge is in the refrigerator, prepare 12 place settings for the taste panel. Each

place setting will be set up with 3 serving cups, a cup of water and two saltine crackers. The

serving cups will each be numbered according to varying recipe. Once the fudge is set up, place

them in appropriate cups for testing, and provide a ballot for all 12 people to do a taste test. They

will judge the fudge based on appearance, texture, flavor and consistency. Only three out of four

batches will be sampled. The product will be evaluated after it is made and determine which ones

to use in the test.

Objective test: Set each sample of fudge on a slanted surface to observe the flow. This

would be over a period of ten minutes, to see how they react at room temperature. It can be

determined if the fudge is or is not set up at room temperature by seeing which one travels

furthest down the slope or becomes the most deformed in the direction of the force.

Experimental findings: It was predicted that reducing the amount of butter will allow

the fudge to maintain its stability at room temperature and varying the lipid type by using butter,

margarine and shortening will allow the fudge to maintain its stability at room temperature.
Panelists were asked to evaluate the fudge based on four characteristics, which include

appearance, texture, flavor and consistency. The results showed that this hypothesis was

accurate.

Table one shows that panelists preferred the appearance of the fudge with the reduced

amount of butter, having an average of 5.84 people that favored it. Margarine played a close

second having an average of 5.46 people that preferred this fudge. The reasoning behind this

may be due to the color of the fudge. The control had a glossy deep brown color, whereas the

margarine and reduced butter had a nonglossy lighter color. Another factor of the fudge with the

reduced amount of butter could be its ability to retain its shape. However this is not strong

evidence as the results are very close to margarine.

In the evaluation of texture that the data shows, according to table two, the reduced

amount of butter was only slightly more preferred than margarine. This was surprising because

the texture of the reduced butter and margarine were so different. People have such different

preferences on texture, and it could be the reason that there was such close results.

The next characteristic that was evaluated was flavor. From the data in table 3, it can be

concluded that margarine was ranked higher than both the control and the reduced butter in

overall flavor. At first we thought that the panelists would prefer the butter flavor because of the

richness in fat and flavor compared to the other samples. It is hard to pinpoint what the panelists

were looking for in flavor because the control and reduced butter have about the same liking, but

are completely different in their characteristics. Our best guess is that the flavor of the margarine

wasnt as rich as the control, but still had more flavor than the reduced butter fudge.

The reduced butter had a stronger consistency than the control and the margarine,

probably because of the lipid level in the product. In Table 4, it shows that the panelists liked the
overall consistency of the fudge with reduced butter, which we predict is because it was more

firm and held its shape at room temperature. This can also be proved in the objective test (see

picture 1). In the objective test, the reduced butter fudge as well as the fudge that contained

shortening did not become deformed by the direction of force. However the other two began to

travel down the slope.

Conclusion:

The overall ranking from the panelists of the three fudge samples is number one, Fudge

containing margarine; second, fudge with reduced butter and third, the control. We think that the

biggest factor leading to this conclusion could be the flavor and texture rankings. It would seem

that the panelists evaluated based on those factors, over the consistency when judging what was

best; however the results of the consistency still matched the predictions that were made in the

hypothesis. In reality our purpose was to figure out how to make a better consistency while

maintaining flavor. We also learned that people prefer margarine over butter. In the future, we

could do further studies to figure out if panelists would like a fudge with a reduced amount of

margarine and compare it to our reduced butter product, to see if it maintained its flavor.

If we were to repeat this test, we would most likely change our questions for panelists, to

evaluate more on consistency, rather than texture and flavor. We would also give samples to

more than twelve panelists to see if we could narrow down our results to be more concise. We

think it could also be beneficial to measure our data using a 9 point scale rather than a 7 point

scale.
Table 1

Table 2
Table 3

Table 4
Table 5

Picture 1