The concept of mixes, like all kinds of bakery products, comes mainly from western countries, and the bakery mixes industry has been overseas for decades. Bakery mixes, also known as premixes, are baking ingredients that are pre-mixed with some of the raw and auxiliary ingredients used in the baking process according to a certain ratio, and then sold to manufacturers or bakery stores for easy use.
Cake mix is a good mix of bulking agent, spices, coloring, sugar, salt, flour and other composite powder, when used as long as the addition of eggs, water, oil and stirred evenly into the cake slurry, or baking, or microwave, baking can be made into a different flavor characteristics, texture texture of the cake.

In addition to flour, sugar, salt, etc. as food ingredients, most of the rest of the ingredients in the premix belong to the category of food additives, is the soul and core of the deployment of different cake mixes, by the thickening and stabilizing agents, emulsifiers, emulsifiers, complex bulking agents and flavors, colors and other components.
So what are the common cake mix ingredients?

Wheat and wheat substitute flour

Wheat flour usually refers to low gluten flour, i.e. cake flour. Wheat alternative flour mostly refers to grains and cereals flour, which takes advantage of the fact that natural crops are rich in different nutrients such as sugars, proteins, minerals and vitamins, and even individual products are rich in the ten essential amino acids to cater to a healthy dietary structure.

The nutrients in these grains can effectively supplement the inadequacy of the fine grains that people often eat in daily life, especially to make up for the imbalance in the content of essential amino acids; it has a significant effect on providing body heat energy, promoting protein complementation, maintaining health and beauty and fitness, etc., and helps to improve the sub-health state of people in modern cities.

This type of product has excellent flavor and high nutritional value, and unique natural flavors, but also to give the cake a rich taste and flavor; such as in the development of chocolate, matcha and other different characteristics of the flavor of the cake mix, usually use cocoa powder, matcha powder and other characteristics of the flavor of raw materials in place of 5% -l5% of the wheat flour, such raw materials also include similar powdered milk, whey powder, soybean powder, betel nut taro powder, pumpkin flour, red date flour, purple potato flour, black rice flour, etc.

Sugar and sugar substitutes

Sweetness is very popular among people. It harmonizes and balances the flavor and makes the overall taste softer. There are mainly the following sweeteners for cake mixes.

1. White Sugar
It is the most used sugar in baking products, with pure sweetness, appropriate sweetness level, stimulating the taste buds of tongue to produce sweetness sensation within 1s, reaching the highest sweetness quickly and disappearing after about 30s, this pleasant sweetness makes white granulated sugar become the standard for comparison of different sweeteners.

2.Glucose
Glucose belongs to starch sugar, compared with white sugar, its sweetness feeling reaction is slower and its sweetness feeling is a little weak, but it can soften the sweetness of white sugar and make the sweetness taste mild and delicious.
In addition, glucose has a cool and weak sweetness, in the preparation of fruity type of mixing powder its role should not be underestimated.

3. Sugar alcohols
With no elevation of blood sugar does not cause dental caries, and does not participate in the Melad reaction, high-temperature treatment will not cause browning of food, pure and natural sweetness, very low hygroscopicity, stable chemical properties, and sweetness, calorie lower characteristics, can be used as a sugar substitute for the development of sugar-free food.

In the production of baked goods, sorbitol has a moisturizing and preserving effect, which prevents the cake from drying out and has a moisturizing and preserving effect, thus prolonging its shelf life.

When used in cake mixes, they cannot completely replace traditional sugars and need to be used in conjunction with other sweeteners.

4.Synthetic sweeteners
Usually refers to meringue (aspartame), sweeteners, acesulfame, saccharin, etc., they are cost-effective and stable, does not contain calories, does not raise blood sugar, and does not cause dental caries, usually as a label or publicity “no calories”, “no sugar”, “low-calorie”, ‘diet’ sweetened foods are usually used as the most common source of sweetness in sweetened foods labeled or advertised as ‘no-calorie’, ‘sugar-free’, ‘low-calorie’, and ‘diet’ sweetened foods.

Food Additives

1. Compound thickening stabilizers.
These are mainly compounded xanthan gum, guar gum, modified starch and thickening agents. They can ensure the foaming volume of the cake batter and the stability and maneuverability of the batter, can increase the water retention, elasticity of the cake, especially for frozen storage or long shelf-life cake, can reduce the impact of frozen storage on the taste of the cake, to maintain the cake thawed with fresh taste.

It has significant anti-aging effect on the phenomena of industrialized long shelf-life cake products such as drying, hardening and crumbing, and improves the phenomena of cake products such as sticking to the teeth and mushy mouth, which makes them sweet, fluffy and refreshing. It can also increase the amount of water absorption, so that the cake form is full and complete, glossy, no slagging and soft and delicate ideal taste, so as to extend the shelf life.

Through a variety of thickening and stabilizing agent combination, can improve the cake batter in the baking before the operability and adapt to mechanized production, these additives on the cake batter viscosity or specific gravity of the regulation, directly affects the cake batter is suitable for bakery small batch manual operation, or semi-automated production, or large-scale continuous production.

2. Compound emulsifier.
The texture of the cake after baking, whether it is soft or rough, dense or delicate, dry or moist, “melt in the mouth” or chewy, mostly depends on the correct combination of emulsifiers selected. Emulsifiers that are often used are distilled glyceryl monostearate, diacetyl tartaric acid mono- and diglycerides, sucrose esters, glycerol fatty acid esters and so on.

Emulsifiers can stabilize the cake organization, improve the starting speed of the cake, increase the volume, enhance the water retention and moisturizing performance of the product, and greatly delay the starch aging caused by inelasticity, cracking, slagging and other undesirable phenomena; emulsifiers are also able to maintain the delicate and fluffy lubrication of the cake, especially to make the heavy cake in the dispersion of oil and fat and stabilize the role of air bubbles, to prolong the shelf life of the product; and at the same time, it can be convenient to make cakes, reducing the batching process, reducing the number of ingredients. At the same time can also be convenient and fast production of cakes, reduce the dosage process and waste of raw materials, improve the effectiveness and product quality.

3. Compound bulking agent.
Is a class of chemical bulking agent, is baking soda and one or more kinds of acid materials with the help of carrier mixed into a class of dry powdery mixture, commonly known as baking powder.

Compared to biological bulking agent yeast, chemical bulking agent expansion force, the amount of small, can effectively reduce the cost, is through the sodium bicarbonate and some acid raw ingredients in the usual state of baking chemical reaction to produce carbon dioxide gas and play a role in foaming.

The puffing agent is in the mixing stage to form a foam point, and to the baking stage of the tissue structure expansion and stereotypes. If other materials are the body of the cake, then the chemical bulking agent can be said to be the “soul” of the cake, and mixed with the air in the cake batter together with the control of the density of the paste before baking, after baking the cake’s looseness and good chewing texture.

4. Flavor and color.
The convenience of cake mixes means that there is no need to add additional flavors and colors in the post-production phase, which is already taken into account at the beginning of the recipe design.

For some industrialized cake mixes with a shelf life of up to 6 months, the evaluation of their use should not be limited to the evaluation of freshness, but also to ensure that the mix and its products can be tasted and evaluated at any time during the shelf life. This tasting evaluation is not limited to the presence of microbiological quality problems such as mold growth and deterioration, but rather focuses on changes in taste, texture, flavor, and texture.

For example, a vanilla muffin mix should not only have a strong vanilla flavor when it is freshly baked, but should also ensure that the consumer still perceives a distinct, pure vanilla flavor at any stage during its shelf life of 6 months (or even longer) in the future.

For example, a red velvet cake mix should not only be satisfied with the velvety texture and attractive color when it is freshly baked, but also take into account that the texture, taste, aroma and beautiful color throughout the shelf life are within a reasonable and acceptable range of fluctuation, or else it will be easily misunderstood or complained about by consumers.

Cake mixes in the product launch that has been for its own mixes and by which the finished cake made by the preset up to half a year or even a year of different product storage conditions, which gives the scientific research or product designers put forward a higher demand.

5. Preservatives.
The shelf life of fresh cake made in general cake store is only 2 to 3 days, the shelf life of chain store is within 7 days, and the shelf life of pre-packaged cake can reach 7 to 30 days. By scientifically optimizing the formula and adopting emulsifier, thickener, modified starch and colloid to improve the product formula, the cake mix can be made for 6-9 months without affecting the lubricating texture and flavor of the cake.

However, limited by machinery, tools, environmental hygiene, packaging temperature and other process control and packaging limitations, need to resort to preservatives to achieve the effect of anticorrosion and mold.

Usually, preservatives are used in a certain proportion in order to maximize the effect with the smallest possible amount of use, mostly potassium sorbate, sodium dehydroacetate, sodium diacetate and other mixed use. In addition, it can also prevent microbial contamination through strict process control and good packaging technology, such as the use of good packaging materials, adding deoxidizer, nitrogen filling packaging and so on.