Patent Application
20210315223
The present disclosure relates to the composition of a milk-containing beverage containing speculoos and a method for preparing it.
More specifically, the present disclosure is intended for the production of milk-containing beverages with a speculoos taste.
It is well known that milk with all kinds of flavourings is offered on the market, such as chocolate milk, or milk with raspberry flavouring and so on.
Speculoos is usually eaten as a cookie with coffee or at breakfast.
Traditionally, speculoos is made from the main ingredients flour, dark brown sugar and unsalted cold butter, and a chicken's egg, and from the secondary ingredients cooking salt, sodium bicarbonate and speculoos herbs.
These ingredients are processed into a dough which is baked in an oven at a temperature of, for example, 180° C. for half an hour.
The baking process produces the characteristic taste of speculoos. What are the chemical reactions?
Although complex chemical reactions occur during the entire baking process, the following two reactions are strongly involved in the formation of the characteristic speculoos taste.
First, the Maillard reaction, also called non-enzymatic browning, which are reactions that occur between reducing sugars and amino acids, the building blocks of proteins such as in the chicken egg.
Secondly, the caramelization reaction, which is also accompanied by a browning, which is a form of oxidation of sugar, or in other words a reaction of sugar with oxygen.
The characteristic taste of speculoos only arises after baking the speculoos dough. If one wants to keep this taste, one will have to start from speculoos that is already baked.
If one wants to obtain speculoos milk, one must succeed in incorporating baked speculoos in a milk-containing beverage in a stable manner, so that the beverage remains homogeneous and can be sold as a beverage.
Cow's milk contains proteins (3 to 4%), fats (3.5% to 5%), lactose (4.5% to 5%) and less than 1% minerals.
Cow's milk, but also other types of milk such as goat's milk or soya milk, contains fats that remain dissolved in the milk and do not precipitate.
Cow's milk also contains proteins that remain dissolved as long as the milk has a neutral pH, so that the milk proteins, mainly casein, do not reach their iso-electric point and do not precipitate.
By centrifuging cow's milk, a layer of fat will separate at the top. By churning the milk, the fat separates as butter and cream, leaving skimmed milk or buttermilk.
At the right pH (6 to 8), milk forms an emulsion in which milk fats can remain dissolved within certain limits.
If one wants to add speculoos to milk, one will first try to grind the baked speculoos as finely as possible without losing any of its taste. This can vary depending on the type of speculoos.
If the finely ground speculoos is added to milk, the speculoos particles will sag and gather as a precipitate at the bottom of the milk.
The present disclosure aims to solve these and other disadvantages by providing a composition of a milk-containing beverage with speculoos taste, and a method that allows a stable dispersion of speculoos in a milk-containing beverage.
The method of preparing speculoos in a milk-containing beverage according to the present disclosure consists of the following steps:
In some embodiments, the grinding of speculoos to speculoos powder, the dispersing of speculoos powder in the milk fat fraction and the addition of the obtained dispersion to the skimmed milk are carried out at a refrigerator temperature in order to preserve the flavourings and to avoid overheating.
In some embodiments, while preparing milk containing speculoos, the pH of the mixture should be kept neutral between pH 6 and 8, in order to avoid any denaturation of milk proteins.
In the dispersion step, an animal or vegetable emulsion stabiliser such as egg yolk lecithin or soya lecithin can be added if necessary.
The milk used to add the speculoos flavourings may be of animal origin, such as cow's milk or goat's milk, but it may also be of vegetable origin, such as soya milk.
Also the milk fats used to prepare dispersions containing speculoos may be of animal or vegetable origin, such as milk cream or soya cream.
In some embodiments, the concentration of milk fats in the milk-containing beverage after the addition of the speculoos dispersion is equal to or approximates the concentration of milk fats in the milk before the milk fat fraction was removed.
The dispersion step can be carried out in a table dispersing mixer that can achieve high rotational speeds (10,000 rpm) and that is equipped with a temperature control such as a Thermomix® device.
The dispersion step can also be carried out in a high-friction dispersion device such as a device with a rotor/stator head such as a Silverson® Batch Mixer, where the rotor presses a mixture through a stator at high speed, causing the mixture to be emulsified or dispersed. The rotor/stator technique allows to achieve emulsions with a droplet size of 2 to 5 microns. The more frictional energy is provided, the smaller the droplets in emulsion or the speculoos granules in dispersion become, which promotes the stability of the emulsion or dispersion.
It is also possible to integrate the grinding of the speculoos and the dispersing of the ground powder in milk fat in a single process by using a Duplex disintegrator/dissolver such as Silverson®. This device is equipped with two working heads that work in opposite directions, with the top head pulling material down from the surface of the mixture, while the bottom head pulls up material from the bottom.
This device is suitable when light or floating material such as a powder needs to be pulled down and quickly dispersed, and is also used in the food industry.
In order to better illustrate the characteristics of the present disclosure, the following applications of the method for preparing speculoos in a milk-containing beverage according to the present disclosure are described below, with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:
The stator 16 is fixed by two support rods 18, 19 while the rotor 15 sucks in the mixture from under the stator 16 through its rotation and then presses it at high speed through the openings 20 of the stator 16. There are several types of stators 16 available with different types of openings 20 depending on the desired purpose: emulsifying or disintegrating.
The method according to the present disclosure is very simple and as follows.
A quantity of speculoos 2 is ground into speculoos powder 4 in a mixer or blender. A quantity of speculoos powder, sufficient to give the intended quantity of milk-containing beverage a speculoos taste, is added to a receptacle 24 containing a quantity of milk fat 5, which corresponds to the milk fat content of the intended quantity of milk-containing beverage in the case of whole milk.
A disintegrator/dissolver 21 with two working heads 22, 23 is inserted into the receptacle 24 and put into operation to disperse the speculoos powder 4 in the milk fat phase 5. If necessary, an emulsion stabiliser such as lecithin can be added.
In some embodiments, this operation may be carried out at refrigerator temperature in order to preserve the flavourings of the speculoos fraction.
As soon as a homogeneous dispersion is formed, the dispersion is added to the target quantity of milk, which is now skimmed or low-fat milk, thus restoring the original concentration of milk fat 5 in the whole milk.
The mixture is mixed again at refrigerator temperature and the stable dispersion is then stored in a milk-containing beverage and distributed in individual packages.
It goes without saying that other mixers, stirrers or dispersers may also be used, provided that they have a sufficient dispersing effect.
It goes without saying that the milk used and the milk fat used may also be of vegetable origin, such as soya milk or soya cream.
It also goes without saying that the emulsion stabilizer may be of animal or plant origin such as egg yolk lecithin or soy lecithin.
In another embodiment, the milk-containing beverage containing speculoos is lyophilised to form milk powder containing speculoos which can be sold in that form and can be converted back into a milk-containing beverage containing speculoos by adding water at another point.
It goes without saying that the milk-containing beverage containing speculoos may also take the form of a yoghurt or a coffee-containing beverage, which can be presented as such or as a lyophilised powder.
In yet another embodiment, no speculoos powder is used to add the taste of speculoos to the milk-containing beverage, but only speculoos spices and sugar are added to the milk-containing beverage, resulting in a low-calorie beverage with speculoos flavourings.
These speculoos spices may consist for example of cinnamon, coriander, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, cardamom and orange peels.
The present disclosure is by not limited to the embodiments described as examples and shown in the figures; on the contrary, such a method for preparing speculoos milk according to the present disclosure can be accomplished in several variants while still remaining within the scope of the present disclosure, as described in the following claims.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 201805676 | Oct 2018 | BE | national |
The present application is the National Phase entry of International Patent Application No. PCT/IB2019/058371 filed Oct. 17, 2019, the entire contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference into this application.
| Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| PCT/IB2019/058371 | 10/2/2019 | WO | 00 |
