The Way the Cookie Crumbles

Professional bakers would love to create a perfect low-calorie cookie; however, cookies with reduced fat and sugar are prone to crumble or break. Photonics Spectra reports that researchers at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom used speckle pattern interferometry to study “inplane strain in biscuits” or why cookies crumble.

The researchers trained a 10mW HeNe laser beam on the cookies and analyzed the scattered light from their surfaces just after they came out of the oven. The method proved suitable because it enabled sensitive noncontact measurement of the uneven tops of the cookies.

They discovered that the moisture in a cookies’ center tends to move outward during cooling, causing the edges to expand and the centers to contract and creating stress lines that are susceptible to cracking in the package – even with careful handling. By adjusting humidity, the researchers say this crumbling might be prevented.