OPTIMIZATION OF COCOA BUTTER EQUIVALENT PRODUCTION FROM FORMULATED HARD PALM OIL MID-FRACTION AND CANOLA OIL BLENDS

The study to find cocoa butter equivalent (CBE) as an alternative to cocoa butter (CB) from available and low cost commercial oils or fats has been increased recently. Current study investigates the blending of hard palm oil mid-fraction (PMF) with canola oil to produce high nutritional CBE using immobilized lipase from Rhizomucor miehei. The experiments were designed using Response Surface Methodology (RSM) to optimize the percentage of saturated-unsaturated-saturated (StUSt) triacylglycerols (TAGs). The experiment was performed at hard PMF concentration of 50 to 90% (w/w), lipozyme load between 5% and 10% (based on the weight of substrate) with a reaction time between 2 to 14 hours. The best reaction conditions to attain this target was 89.35% (w/w) of hard PMF concentration, 2 hours of reaction time, and 5% (based on the weight of substrate) of lipozyme load, resulting CBE which contains 64.44 +/- 1.18% of StUSt. The addition of canola oil improved the nutritional value of CBE which was marked by the higher percentage of linoleic acid (omega-6, 4.53 +/- 0.06%) and linolenic acid (omega-3, 0.74 +/- 0.14%) in CBE than CB (omega-6, 2.68 +/- 0.34%). Enzymatic interesterification was not altering fatty acid content in the CBE, especially linoleic acid (omega-6) and linolenic acid (omega-3) which was characterized by no significant difference (p > 0.05) between the fatty acid profile of initial mixture (before interesterification) and CBE (after interesterification).