Bláthanna's Bakery

On Tuesday the 25th of April the final showcase for our products took place. I am thrilled to say it was a huge success. Everyone put so much effort into their stands and posters and it all looked very professional. The feedback from the public in regards to my vegan muffins was more than positive. They loved them and some were even enquiring as to where they could buy them which is always a nice compliment. It was a great hurdle for all of us to come through and as for Bláthanna’s Bakery well I think its a wrap for the time being. 

Below are some images of the stand on the day.  included are close ups of the finished packaging and a gift idea for the muffins. 

After 4 long long years I finally had my very last lab in Waterford. It has been an interesting run and has come with its good times and bad times. The final nutritional tests were conducted on my product including sugars, proteins, fats, moisture and ash. The final nutritional labelling for my product is almost complete and I will be posting information about this soon. 

talk soon 

blanaid 

The packaging I will be using for this product is 100% biodegradable/compostable. It is a perfect fit for the product I am creating as it is clean, eco - friendly and kind to the earth. Recyclable packaging is becoming an important aspect of food as people are becoming more aware of the effects waste has on the environment and its role in climate change. It is becoming an important factor in peoples decisions to purchase certain products as their awareness towards recycling and reusing materials is becoming more prevalent everyday. Below are samples of packaging I obtained from an Irish company called Down2Earth. They are based in Cork in Ireland and specialize in supplying biodegradable and compostable packaging of food grade quality to all types of food producing companies. 

The logo of the company will be placed on the front of the packaging and has been designed to fold over where the bag and box seal to ensure the product is secure when distributed to the consumers.  These samples will be put together for the showcase the way I have intended to sell them. 

When I first began looking for packaging I am ashamed to say I genuinely did not realize how much of an impact packaging can have on a product. I am afraid to say I under estimated its effect and in my line of expertise I am not sure that is a good thing. So in my nievety I told myself well everyone cant be star pupil but I could do something which would be helpful to the environment and all the little fishes in the sea. Hence why I chose this type of packaging for my product. 

Hope you all get a giggle out of that but I also hope that it enlightens you all on just how important packaging really is. 

Talk soon 

As well as a total product makeover I have recreated my logo. I wanted to be something that would help people understand the meaning of the name of the company and also be more relevant to my own name. I have used an image of a cherry blossom trees flowers that I took myself and incorporated the name of the company into this. I hope that everyone likes it. 

This week some changes were made to my product. After weeks of perfecting the recipes I had chosen to do I was informed that my product was not suitable for my project and that it would have to be more unique to reach the standard which had been set by one particular lecture. The way this was brought across to me was quite harsh and if I’m honest it did knock my confidence in my own ability to bake and really made me wonder was this lecturer going to fail me in my final year. It also made me question all the work I had done throughout the year because I had let this person’s negative comments get into my head. I have had issues with being set back before by other peoples opinions and after years of being blundered and pushed around I decided that enough was enough. I’m not about to let one negative person throw me down. So in an effort to improve on my product I developed a range of vegan muffins. I am delighted to say that after much trial and error I have successfully developed two flavours. The first muffin is very a very decedent chocolate and cherry muffin using coconut milk and avocados with the addition of wheatgrass powder to give it a functional quality. The second muffin is a banana and honeycomb muffin. This muffin is playful and it uses coconut milk and banana to replace animal based ingredients. The addition of spices like cinnamon and nutmeg give this muffin another depth of flavour and interest. 

Though I am pleased with these products, I do think it will be a challenge to get potential customers to see them as more than vegan. Veganism is the most restricted form of vegetarianism. People who follow this diet do not consume any animal based products usually for ethical reasons. For a lot of people I think veganism is preconceived to be very boring and uninteresting and bland. My objective is to show people that there is more to veganism than meets the eye and that vegan foods don’t necessarily have to be healthy or boring that they can actually be quite delicious and interesting. So I hope that people will see that I have become quite passionate about this product and that they will love it as much as I do. 

Talk soon 

Blanaid 

Image 1 - Vegan Chocolate and Cherry Muffins with Wheatgrass Powder 

Image 2 - Vegan Banana and Honeycomb Muffins 

This week in the kitchens I recreated the apple, walnut, salted caramel and honeycomb muffins I had made last week. I also remade the chocolate and cherry muffins using black cherries and white chocolate as decoration and black cherries and milk chocolate in the actual muffin. 

I am delighted to say that the product is coming along very well. The apple muffins still need some work and I am hoping to try a strudel topping on them next week in the kitchens to add to the texture profile of the muffin and hopefully help them to stand out in an already saturated market. My main goal for this product is to get the recipe perfected (and so far so good) but also produce something which is comforting and enjoyable. At the moment my main selling point for my product is the fact that all the ingredients I am using are high quality and every element in each muffin is handmade. The packaging I hope to use for my product will be environmentally friendly and 100% biodegradable/compo-stable but still be sturdy and robust. 

I am hoping that all these elements will come together and help make my product a little bit special. 

Happy Baking 

Blánaid 

Chocolate and Cherry Muffins

This week in the labs I conducted protein analysis on my product using the kjeldahl method. Firstly I weighed out 1.5g of my sample and placed it into the kjeldahl tubes. I then added antifoaming tablets, kjeldahl tablets and glass beads to the tubes. I then added concentrated sulphuric acid to the tubes which allowed my product to be broken down. This was then placed into the digestor for 2hrs or until there was so fumes coming off the product and the liquid residue had turned green. Once this occured water was added to the tubes and they were distilled against sodium hydroxide and boric acid for 4mins. The boric acid solution was then titrated against hydrochloric acid and the volume needed to turn the boric acid from blue to pink was then used to calculate the protein content of the product. 

The sample being prepared for digestion in the kjeldahl tubes. 

Here can be seen the samples being digested. 

The sample after the water has been added once digestion is completed. 

This week in the lab determined the shelf life of 1 week old muffins I had produced. The TVC was conducted in the same way as week 1 however the results were extremely different. In week 1 the TVC was 1x10^6 cfu/ml which is quite a high result. This week there was no bacteria present in the product which indicated that the product has the potential to last for 7 days. Below is an image of the results obtained from the experiment. Hopefully this will continue to be the outcome of this test. 

These Apple and Salted Caramel muffins were made by me at home on the weekend. These were a trial run for the real deal and i had also purchased a muffin tray and some new cases so I wanted to try them out to see how well they worked :) These worked beautifully and I can safely say they tasted very good :D Not to credit myself too much I know I still have alot to do for this product :) As I work on it I realise I’m trying to please far too many people and I’m straying away for the reasons why I love to bake and why I love the product I am making. Anyone can bake but its those who have respect for the ingredients they are using who can take it to the next level. I am slowly learning throughout this process how important it is to have respect for the ingredients i am using and how they interact but also to have respect for the vision I have for this product and what way i want it to go rather than what everyone else wants :) 

Keep following me for more updates on my progress as I begin to come to the end of my trial and error days with my product :) 

Happy baking xx

Blánaid 

This week in the lab I conducted a TVC or Total Viable Count on my Chocolate and Cherry Muffins. Firstly I determined the dilution series I wished to do. Since these muffins were 2 weeks old and had been frozen to preserve them I decided upon doing a 10-2 to a 10-6 dilution series. Firstly I weighed out 10g of my sample and placed it into a stomacher bag. I then added 90ml of sterile ringers solution to the bag under aseptic conditions to prevent contamination. This was then placed into the stomacher for 1min. Once complete I took 5 sterile universal tubes and filled each of them with 9ml of sterile ringers solution under aseptic conditions. Once complete I proceeded to add 1ml of my sample which had been stomached to the 10-2 tube using a pipette and aseptic conditions. For the 10-3 tube I took 1ml of solution from the 10-2 tube and added it to the 10-3 tube. I continued this until I had reached 10-6. 

I then created an aseptic zone using a bunsen burner and lined up the empty nutrient agar plates. I took 1ml from each dilution sample and placed it into the plates. I then poured molten nutrient agar over the samples and swirled the plates in a figure of 8 to evenly distribute the sample. Once the plates set they were placed into the incubator at 28 degrees Celsius for 2 days.Results of the tests were taken the following week. 

Figure 1 shows 10-3 dilution which was too numerous to count.

Figure 2 shows 10-4 plate which had 161 colonies on it. This was then converted to show that the muffin contained 1.61x10^6 cfu/ml. 

This week in the lab I determined the sugar content of my Apple and Salted Caramel muffins. Firstly I prepared four standard sucrose solutions in order to produce a standard curve. This would later help in determining the sugar content of my own product. I weighed out 5g, 10g, 15g and 20g of sucrose and put it into 1 volumetric flask each. I then proceeded to adding 100ml of DI water to each flask. For the unknown sample ie my product I placed 20g of muffin into a stomacher bag and 100ml of DI water. I then placed this into the stomacher for 1min. When it came to the time to read the samples a refractometer was used to do so. Firstly the machine must be zeroed using DI water. Using a dropper i placed a drop of DI water into the machine and allowed it to read until it settled at 1.33. This inticated that the machine was now zeroed and the samples could be read. The standard samples were read first and then the unknown. The results obtained were then written up in excel and a standard curve was produced. From the the sugar content of my product was determined. 

Figure 1 shows the solutions made up which would become the standard curve. 

This week in hell’s kitchen I recreated the Apple and Honeycomb and Chocolate and Cherry muffins. Both these recipes turned out very well and I am confident in saying I will be using these recipes for the next stage of development in my product. The next stage of development will be to create muffins which are infused with the flavours of well known deserts such as apple crumble and black forest gateau. Hopefully this will give my product the edge it needs and keep the leaders of the kitchen happy. 

Wish me luck :)

This week in the kitchens I recreated the apple and honeycomb muffins and produced a new recipe for chocolate and cherry muffins. The honeycomb for the apple muffins turned out fantastic. It hardened really well and had a good rise however the actual muffins were a little bit of a disaster... The apples sunk tot he bottom of the muffin and because I sprinkled a little bit of the key ingredients it prevented the muffin from rising. The chocolate and cherry muffins were delicious. The rise was really good and the flavour of the muffin was lovely. Hopefully they will continue to come out well and as for the apple and honeycomb muffins well I definitely have my work cut out for me. 

Image 1 - Apple and Honeycomb

Image 2 - Chocolate and Cherry Muffins 

This week in the lab I conducted what will be the first of many tests to determine the fat content of my product. I used the Soxhlet Method to perform this task .

Firstly I collected the glassware necessary for the reflux and set up my equipment accordingly. 

This experiment is conducted in duplicate to ensure error does not occur. Once set up 5g of sample was weighed out and placed into a porous thimble. this was placed into the main body of the reflux and petroleum ether was poured over it. Cotton wool is placed over the thimble to protect the content from the ether. 

After much consideration I have gone through with my decision to change my product. Instead of creating a range of artisan chutney I will be developing a line of luxury muffins infused with the flavours of well known ciders. 

I am really looking forward to developing this product as baking is something i am quite passionate about. 

So this week in the kitchen I had the opportunity to create an Apple and Honeycomb muffin using Bulmers Original Cider and a Pear and Salted Caramel muffin using Kopparbery Pear Cider. 

Both have varieties have shown great promise and with some alterations and modification I have no doubt they will turn out very well. 

Next week I am recreating the Apple and honeycomb flavour and producing a brand new flavour. 

Talk soon 

Hello everyone my name is Blánaid and I am a final year student studying a BSc(Hons) in Food Science and Innovation at Waterford Institute of Technology.

As part of my course this semester, I am currently in the process of developing a range of homemade artisan style chutneys. Flavours include butternut squash and curry chutney and apple and date chutney. Over the course of the semester I will post weekly updates of the progress I am making in the development of the product.

This the first attempt I made at making chutney. It was the first time I had made chutney and I am pleased to say it came out very well. It was a little bit too spicy so I will be making it again next week and hopefully have it perfected very soon.

I will post another update in the next week. 

Talk soon