Abstract: This study investigated the change of texture profile analysis (TPA) parameters such as hardness, resilience, and cohesiveness of moon cakes stuffed with purple sweet potato during the softening (chilling) process after baking, and also examined their correlations with sensory evaluation. The results showed that all the TPA parameters increased firstly and then decreased during 72 h of post-baking softening. The TPA parameters of moon cakes stuffed with 50% purple sweet potato and 50% lotus seed paste (sample 1) reached their peaks at 24 h of post-baking softening, while the peaks of TPA parameters attained at 48 h for those stuffed with 100% purple sweet potato (sample 2). Overall, the TPA parameters of the first sample were lower than those of the second sample. Sensory evaluation at 12, 24, 48 and 72 h of post-baking softening showed that the sensory scores were the highest at 72 h, which were extremly significantly negatively correlated with the TPA parameters (P ≤ 0.01). Therefore, the post-baking softening process could help improve the sensory quality of purple sweet potato moon cakes, while TPA parameters such as hardness, resilience and cohesiveness could be applied to objectively evaluate the sensory quality of purple sweet potato moon cakes.

Key words: purple sweet potato moon cake, post-baking softening, texture profile analysis (TPA), sensory evaluation, correlation