Food Innovation Centre

Block Party Bakery

Block Party Bakery is an independent Nottingham bakery offering signature New York-style giant cookies, cookie pies, blondies, and Basque burnt cheesecakes. Under Nottingham City Council’s Talent & Innovation funding, Faraz Ghani, Co-founder of Block Party Bakery, approached us to help with existing product development of their cookies.

Block party_page

Kavya and the Food Innovation Centre were an absolute pleasure to work with. Kavya accommodated and swiftly adapted to my last-minute project changes. I was kept well updated throughout the project with informative updates and the end result gave us a lot to work with. I have also benefitted from access to workshops with the FIC and would highly recommend the team!


Faraz Ghani - Co-founder, Block Party Bakery

 
Project brief

  •       Explore reasons for the short shelf-life of their current cookie formulation and suggest ways to increase this to 7 days. He wanted the texture to remain soft and chewy and as a ‘soft bake’ style cookie over a longer period.

The response

  • Our technologist conduced a literature review to understand the various aspects of cookie formulation and the role of different ingredients as well as their proportions, and their roles in extending shelf life.

  • Based on this, an experimental plan was made to trial different formulations and look at water activity and moisture content across 20 days, in 3 formats of packaging to understand where changes were noticeable.

Benefit to the business

Utilising the information from our literature review and formulation trials, Block Party Bakery, has a clearer understanding of which steps in their processing, which format of packaging, and which ingredients in their formulation, are impacting the shelf life and eating quality of their cookies. They can now use this insight to drive changes in future reformulation and have a strong knowledge base on which they can build.

For details about who to contact for queries regarding the Food Innovation Centre, please visit our contact us page.