The block was repeated thirteen times, thus totalling 52 analyses for each sample and 78 consumers (Meilgaard et al., 1999). The 78 untrained consumers were recruited from among the students, staff and professors of the IBILCE. The sensory analysis was performed in individual booths, under white light and temperature of 22 °C. The cakes were presented on plastic plates coded with three digits. Within each block, the sample presentation was balanced, randomized and monadic. The means of the sensory attributes were compared using variance analysis followed by the Tukey test (significant difference when p ≤ 0.05), using the PASW Statistics 18 software (SPSS Inc.). The cakes were considered acceptable when at least

50% of the consumers gave them a score greater than or equal to 6 (liked slightly) ( Conti-Silva, selleck Silva, & Arêas, 2011). The preference mapping was evaluated in relation to overall acceptability. First, cluster analysis was applied to the samples, using mean substitution as the data deletion

method because of the AZD4547 purchase incomplete blocks. After this, the resultant matrix was subjected to multidimensional scaling analysis. The Statistica 7.0 software (StatSoft, Inc.) was used. The ethical issues of the sensory analysis were approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the IBILCE. Most of the fourteen panellists were female (93%), aged between 19 and 27 years (100%), who like cakes very much (100%) and consume cakes weekly (29%) and fortnightly (36%). The cakes were described using five attributes for appearance, one for aroma, two for flavour and four for texture (Table 2). The addition of prebiotics enhanced crust brownness and dough beigeness of the cakes in comparison to the standard cake (Table 3). Fructans are polymers of fructose linked by linear or branched connections, through β(2 → 1) or β(2 → 6) (Carabin & Flamm, 1999), and since fructose is a reducing sugar (Amrein, Schönbächler, Escher, & Amado, 2004; Damodaran, Parkin, & Fennema, 2008), this may favour the Maillard reaction, thereby contributing towards browning the crust and dough of the cakes. The cakes with fructans presented greater hardness and lower crumbliness

in relation to the standard Florfenicol cake (Table 3), what was expected since fructans are soluble fibres, compounds that can impair the texture of baked goods (Pomeranz, Shogren, Finney, & Bechtel, 1977; Wang, Rosell, & Barber, 2002). Higher concentrations of inulin resulted in higher hardness values of bread crumbs in relation to breads containing fat (O’Brien et al., 2003) and oligofructose enhanced firmness of sponge cake in relation to cake with sucrose (Ronda et al., 2005). Moreover, the higher hardness and lower crumbliness of prebiotic cakes may be related to lower size of the bubbles in the dough, because lower bubbles can indicate less air incorporated to the dough during baking, which may contribute towards making the cake harder and less fragile.