Acceptability of Vegetable Cakes

Abstract

This study was conducted from May to November of 2015. The students and teachers of Tawang Elementary School and La Trinidad National High School served as the consumer-type panelists. Also, the Chef de Partait of the bakeshop section of Le Chef @ the Manor was tapped to be the expert panel. The study is an experimental type research. The general objective was to modify a cake recipe with vegetables sugar beet and zucchini. Specifically, the objectives were to determine the quality characteristics of vegetable cakes by an expert panel, determine the consumer’s acceptability of the sugar beet and zucchini cakes in terms of color, appearance, texture, flavor and overall liking when consumer-type panelists were grouped according to age and gender, determine the cost of producing the vegetable cakes, determine the nutritional facts, and identify the factors that influence the consumers in accepting the vegetable cakes. The statistical tools used for the acceptability of the vegetable cakes were t-test and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). To compute the cost of producing the sugar beet and zucchini cakes, the formula by Department of Trade & Industry (2006) was used; direct material costs, direct labor costs, and manufacturing overhead costs were added. After adding the different costs, a profit margin was added which was based in the cost-plus pricing by Riley (2012). Finally, to compute for the price, a markup was added to all the costs then divided into the number of yields (Gonzaga et al., 2011). For both sugar beet and zucchini cakes, it has 2 treatments each. Treatment 1 for both vegetable cakes used 150 grams grated sugar beet and zucchini, while for the treatment 2 used 300 grams of the same vegetables. Based on the evaluation of the expert panel, all of the cake samples are of good quality in terms of color, appearance, texture and flavor except for sugar beet cake with 150 grams grated sugar beets had a sunken top. The following were the results on the acceptability of the consumer-type panelists as to age and gender. The age group 13-19 accepts the cake samples the most while in terms of their gender; the male group accepts the cake samples more than the female group. The cost of producing the vegetable cakes varies from one recipe to another, the reason lies on how much grated vegetable was added in the preparation. Regarding the nutritional facts of the vegetable cakes, sugar beet cake with 300 grams grated sugar beets recorded the highest in almost all of the nutrients computed for the study while zucchini cake with 150 grams grated zucchini has the lowest record in almost all of the computed nutrients. Finally, both the consumer-type and expert panelists consider nutrients and aesthetic appeal as the leading factors in accepting the vegetable cakes.