Nutritional snack bars are a popular consumer product that fills the growing need for healthy on-the-go snacks. For manufacturers, enhanced dietary components, such as the absence of added sugars and high fiber and fruit content, increase the appeal and variety of snack bars on the market. However, formulators face difficulties with hard-to-obtain fruit and restrictive fruit formats. The requirement for high-quality fruit filling ingredients generally cannot be matched by baking stability and low water activity, and manufacturers have had to resort to imitation and/or artificial products.
Fortunately, today, URC’s range of pieces and pastes provide cereal bar manufacturers with a versatile and robust way to add real fruit to their products in a wide variety of fruit mixes and flavours. The unique formulation and design can provide a full serving of fruit per serving, as well as meet manufacturing functionality needs for bake stability and low water activity.
Bake-stable fruit bar fillings have greater integrity under heat and will not boil off the end of the bar during baking, thus avoiding burning or caramelization problems. Water activity levels below 0.65 ensure minimal moisture transfer to prevent spoilage and extend storage stability. URC Fruit Bar Filler Pastes are a convenient option when superior fruit flavors and fruit content claims are critical.
Fruit bar fillings are made through a proprietary ultra-rapid concentration process that reduces raw fruit materials to less than 10% moisture in less than 60 seconds. This means that the fruit ingredients experience minimal residence time and the rapid cooling process preserves the flavor, color and goodness of the fruit, naturally. Unlike frozen, draft or sun-dried fruit, the texture remains smooth and delicious, without the use of artificial additives or preservatives. Easy to use and available in pumpable drums, Ultra Rapid Concentration is creating a new way to include real fruit bar fillings in baked and snack bars.
URC Fruit Bar Fillings can be used as a smooth fruity center in a baked bar, as a sheet paste to create a visible fruit layer, or as a mix paste in formed bars to reduce added sugar content and provide ready of cleaner ingredients.
