Students in the University of Delaware’s Food Science Capstone course got to show off their semester-long work as part of the Ag Day 2017 festivities with a display featuring edible cookie dough, fiber pop and even a portion of chips that provides consumers with all of their calories, carbs, protein, fats and fiber.

The tasty treats were available inside Townsend Hall as the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (CANR) welcomed the Delaware community to its campus on Saturday, April 29.

Rolf Joerger, associate professor in the Department of Animal and Food Sciences who teaches the class, said that he was proud of the students’ accomplishments.

“Even though most of the students are in their last semester, they enthusiastically engaged in their projects. Not only did they have to come up with an idea for a product that was not already available on the market, but they had to figure out which ingredients would be most suitable and in what quantities,” said Joerger.

In addition, Joerger explained that the students had to come up with a feasible production process, develop appropriate packaging for their product, create a package design, generate a nutrition label, develop and document quality controls, calculate pricing and familiarize themselves with the applicable government regulations.

“These tasks are made a little easier because the students work in teams, but then coordinating schedules and working together productively is not always so simple. All in all, working on these projects is excellent preparation for a job in the food industry,” he said.

Gonut Bites

Brendan Scott, Kyra Fivek, Patrick Cozza and Suzanne Sungenis formed the Gonut Bites team, which came up with the idea to have miniature donuts filled with home-made ice cream in flavors such as Boston crème, jelly, chocolate and vanilla frosted.

The team said that the product is similar to “doughnut holes” on the market, such as Dunkin’ Donuts’ Munchkins or Entenmann’s POP’ems.

Once the cooked doughnts cooled, they used a frosting tip to fill them with their own soft-serve ice cream, which they made at Vita Nova, the fine dining, student-operated restaurant on campus.

Cookie Chews

The Cookie Chews: Edible Cookie Dough group was made up of Matt Bogdan, Amanda Chasten, Allison Ni and June Teichmann.

Ni said that the target audience for the product would be teens, young adults and “people who like trendy food because cookie dough is very trendy nowadays. This could even be a kind of on the go snack.”

Besides the cookie dough ball base, the group also did trials on coating it with chocolate or vanilla frosting as well as injecting it with Nutella and peanut butter.

The flavors the group decided on included cookies and cream, Nutella and peanut butter, coffee and chocolate chip and funfetti.

Ni said that the group ended up using whole oat flour in their product instead of all-purpose flour because “whole oat flour is gluten-free, which would appeal to those who believe that being gluten-free is a healthier lifestyle.”

Nourich

The Nourich team included Louis Colaruotolo, Yara Abdelaal and Spencer Hoernes, and theirs is a chip product containing all of the macro-nutrients for a fully balanced diet when eaten in the required portion. The group said that the product would be marketable to military personnel looking for less bulky alternatives to meals, weight loss seekers and those hoping to eat healthier in general.

Because of the ability to eat the chips throughout the day to get the portion required for a fully balanced diet, the group was experimenting with different flavors to appeal to customers at different times of the day.

“I think at some point, if you’re going to decide that your entire life is going to be eating chips for all of your nutrition, you’re going to [need some variety]. We made a coffee flavor for the morning and then we’re also going to try a chocolate and then a chocolate raspberry flavor and see how all of those work out,” said Colaruotolo.

Fiber Pop

The Fiber Pop group consisted of Rizalina Gadaingan, Warren Skopowski and Nicholas Sloman.

Fiber Pop is an apple ginger juice with berry spheres which contain apple fibers by use of an alginate bath. The drink utilized left over apple fibers to reduce waste that other juices typically wouldn’t use.

Skopowski said that it is similar to bubble tea.

“It’s like the bubble tea with chai bubbles. Instead of the bubble tea that you see in a lot of Korean tea shops where there’s tapioca bubbles at the bottom, ours is floating at the top, which makes it good for when we’re packaging it and when we distribute it in the plastic bottles, they’ll be floating at the top so when you open it and drink it, every sip you get some of the bubbles and the juice mixed together,” said Skopowski.

Algae Oil Chip Dippers

The Algae Oil Chip Dippers team was made up of Brienna Anderson, Kimberly Markham and Rachel Smith.

The group said that the sweet-and-spicy chip-and-dip snack is a flavorful, convenient, gluten-free product made with algae oil. Both the chips and mayonnaise-style dip were created using algae oil, which is an excellent source of monounsaturated fats and has 75 percent less saturated fat than olive oil.

The corn tortilla chips are baked and sweetened to provide a flavor that complements the spice of the dip. The dip and chips are packaged in a single serving portion with environmentally friendly plastics and do not require refrigeration until after opening.