**Abstract**

Nowadays, the flour-based confectionery industry is facing different challenges in reducing caloric and increasing nutritive values in order to produce healthier products, given that consumption of flour-based confectionery products has been growing steadily worldwide. In addition to wheat flour, these products include sugar and fat, which contribute to high energy value, but have few micronutrients and are mostly poor in nutritional terms. Due to frequency of consumption, they can harm a balanced diet, especially when it comes to children and young people. Flourbased confectionery is highly suitable for enrichment with ingredients that have pronounced functional properties. In this sense, the text offers some possibilities for improving such products through different approaches and presents new trends in developing functional, flour-based confectionery by using different supplements that could decrease caloric value, improve nutritional and non-nutritional values and develop products with pronounced functional properties.

**Keywords:** flour-based confectionery, nutritive and non-nutritive improvements, reduction of caloric value

#### **1. Introduction**

Confectionery products are concentrated food items that belong to the group of energy-rich foods obtained through treatment of carbohydrate raw materials during industrial or handcraft processing. They are mostly characterised by sweet taste, as the main ingredients are sucrose and other sugars. They are consumed on a daily basis depending on individual desires, habits and customs, regardless of the consumer's age, gender or status and it is food that enjoys great popularity among wide range of population.

According to their ingredients, methods of production, and final product, confectioneries can be divided into three main categories: sugar confectionery (candies, caramels and others), chocolate and chocolate products and flour confectionery (biscuits, cookies, crackers, wafers and others). This is just a rough classification of confectionery. Precise classification is not simple because of overlapping categories and new complex products constantly being created. Today we can find a lot of different products as a combination of these three categories.

The chocolate, biscuits and confectionery industries represent a prominent and dynamic food sector in Europe. The latest Statistical Bulletin demonstrates that the chocolate, biscuit & confectionery industry is a major contributor to the European economy. According to data collected from Eurostat, the production in Europe has

increased by 2.3% in 2015, reaching 11,736.975 metric tons. This shows that the passion to create innovative treats and bring pleasure to consumers remains vivid among these sectors [1].

Flour-based products are the most often consumed ones among the confectionery in general and their growth in the market has been boosting per capita consumption around the world.

Due to the popularity and increasing interest in the functional food concept, the relationship between food and health has an increasing impact on food innovation. Nutrition knowledge has been used to improve consumer health which represents the functional food concept in general.

As the role of diet in the prevention of human ailments such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases and obesity has become more evident, many consumers are increasingly seeking functional foods to improve their diets. Consequently, there is a trend to search for natural raw materials rich in dietary fibre and high in antioxidant capacity as functional ingredients for the food industry [2].

Regarding flour-based confectionery, these efforts are especially important, as children and young population consume such products gladly and very often, and sometimes without control. Uncontrolled consumption of high-calorie products in unnecessary amounts, especially confectionery, can harm balanced diet and consequently lead to obesity.

Therefore, confectionery manufacturers are facing two different challenges. New products need to develop with improved health-promoting properties and at the same time they should be tasty and look like conventional confectionaries that are popular and regularly widely consumed.

### **2. Definition of flour-based confectionery**

Confectionary products with flour as the main ingredient include a great number of different products that vary not only in their formula but also in the way they are manufactured. They are generally made of soft wheat flour. Understanding the common terms is sometimes rather difficult because of numerous kinds of such products and their different names. For example, *cookie* is a term used in the USA, defined by a formula high in sugar and shortening and relatively low in water. Similar products made in Europe and the United Kingdom are called *biscuits*. The biscuits made in USA are more accurately defined as chemically leavened bread. In addition, a number of products do not fit to this definition of cookies but are still called cookies mainly because they do not fit elsewhere [3].

Cakes are characterised by a high level of sugar in the formula. The difference between cookies and cakes is that cakes also contain relatively high levels of water. Because the molar sugar concentration is much lower in cakes than in cookies, the starch gelatinises during baking. Therefore, cakes set when baked, giving a light product. The specific structure of the cakes is obtained by incorporating air into the batter in form of small air cells during mixing. As with cookies, the definition of crackers must be quite broad, as there are many types of crackers. In general, crackers contain little or no sugar but moderate to high levels of fat (10–20%), based on flour weight. The doughs generally contain low levels of water (20–30%) [3].

In addition to flour, main ingredients incorporated during flour-based confectionery manufacturing are sugar and fat. The other ingredients such as milk, eggs, salt, aerating agents, emulsifiers, flavour and colour can be included as well. Water is added in different amounts to connect ingredients and to make dough. The water acts as a solvent, too. The main technology operations in flour-based confectionary are: mixing and moulding, baking and cooling. Within these basic operations,

#### *Flour-Based Confectionery as Functional Food DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95876*

a great number variations and different regimes can exist. This is why we can find a great number of different kinds of products on the market today.

Ingredients play an important role in creating an acceptable product. Whether alone or together, each ingredient contributes an important quality to the final product. Flour, liquid, sugar, leavening agent, eggs, and fat are present in a proportion that, when properly mixed, make a quality product [4]. Thanks to high amount of carbohydrates and fat, flour-based confectionary products are very rich in caloric value. Caloric values for cookies and other similar products range from 1400 to 2300 kJ/100 g [5].
