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Food Science Institute

Author: Elsa Toburen

FDSCI Product Development Purple Passion Team Heading to Puerto Rico

The Food Science Product Development Purple Passion team will be heading to San Juan, Puerto Rico to compete at the RCA Culinology® Pastry Competition March 14-17, 2017. The team members are: Kyle Phalen (graduate student), Austin Weber (sophomore), Erin Manville (freshman), and Kyle Johnson (junior), the students were supervised by Dr. Kelly Getty, Associate Professor in Food Science. The Purple Passion Team will be competing with their Puerto Rican Style Mango Rum Cake with Spice Mango Coulis. This quick dessert is a microwavable cake developed with traditional Puerto Rican pastry concepts.

At the RCA 2017 Culinology® Pastry Competition, the Purple Passion Team will have access to a kitchen space where they will prep and become familiar with the space and get ready for the actual competition day. The day of the competition, the team will have 1.75 hours to get their product ready for Judging evaluation. The criteria that the teams will be evaluated are:

Gold Standard Criteria: Flavor and Aroma, Texture, Ingredient Composition/Authenticity, Presentation,and Professionalism

Culinology® Match Test: Flavor and Aroma, Texture, Presentation, Overall Similarity to Gold Standard, Overall Similarity to Sell Sheet Photo, Easy and Accuracy of Preparation Instructions.

 

The Purple Passion Rum Cake with Spice Mango Coulis Label was created by one of our food science students, Conrad Kabus, Junior in Food Science and Student Video/Graphic Designer in the Food Science Institute.  The K-State Food Science Product Development Purple Passion Team will be competing against 3 other schools. Congratulations to them and Good Luck at the Competition!

 

 

Graduate Students take Cheesy-Pack Cracker to AACCI

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Since March 2016, four K-State Food Science graduate students have been working on a new product called Cheesy-Pack Cracker. The product development team members include Lu Wang, Karolina Sanchez, Gagan Gandhi, and Bingyi Li. Their goal was to create an egg-free, high protein, salty granola bar.

The Cheesy-Pack Cracker is described as a ready-to-eat cracker snack. To replace the eggs, they used natural flax seed flour as the binder. This is beneficial for those with egg allergies and it lowers the calorie content. To increase the protein, cheese powder was mixed into the dough. This improves color and adds a rich flavor. The cracker also has whole grain ingredients to increase fiber content. In the end, this savory cracker will satisfy any snack craving.img_0325

After many trials and errors, the team remained optimistic and entered the product into the American Association of Cereal Chemists International (AACCI) product development competition. Their hard work was rewarded as they were chosen to be a finalist in the competition.

The students will be attending the AACCI annual meeting to compete in the competition in Savannah, GA from October 22-26, 2016. They will compete against four other national college teams. This competition challenges the students to be innovative and promotes a connection between academics and industry. Best of luck to our K-State product development team!

The team’s advisors are Drs. Karen Schmidt and Jayendra Amamcharla.

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Contributors and Editors: Karen Blakeslee, Bryanna Cook and Elsa Toburen

Pictures by Elsa Toburen

Cargill Visits K-State to Discuss Future Opportunities for Students

Recently, Lindsey Jansen from Cargill’s Corn Milling North America division visited Dr. Phebus’ Introduction to Food Science (FDSCI 302) class to provide an overview of Cargill’s business divisions and to discuss how corn is processed into many important food and industrial products, such as high fructose corn syrup. Lindsey discussed internship opportunities in her manufacturing division for science-oriented students, and provided several food science undergraduate students guidance on submitting applications to be considered for positions during summer 2017. Cargill was one of several companies on campus last week (Sept 20-22, 2016) for the K-State Career Fair, and we want to thank them all for supporting our program and our students.

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Celebrating 41 years of Service and Leadership

Curtis and family A retirement dinner was held on Saturday, September 3rd for Dr. Curtis L. Kastner, former Director of the Food Science Institute. The event was held at the Stanley Stout Center.

It was a great night! More than 160 people came to celebrate Dr. Kastner’s retirement from Kansas State University!  Family, friends, colleagues old and new, students and staff came to honor Dr. Kastner and Rebecca, who spent 41 years at Kansas State University. Curtis retired in July to spend time with his wife Rebecca and enjoy their free time with their family. Continue reading “Celebrating 41 years of Service and Leadership”