**2.5 Vegetable leaf-fortified pastry products**

Consumption of pastry products, such as snacks (cookies, *Chinchin*), sandwiches, and burgers, especially among children is on the rise in most West African countries because they are affordable, ready-to-eat, attractive, and have long shelf life [46]. The importance of these pastry products to humanity goes beyond convenience eating but is sometimes used in various feeding programs for school children and areas where there are natural disasters [47]. The MicroVeg project, therefore, concentrated a major effort to develop the fortification of these pastry products as a means of improving their nutritional qualities to meet the health-promoting needs of women and children.

Various plant products that are rich in micronutrients, vitamins, protein, and fiber have been used by researchers to fortify these pastry products with a view to improving their nutritional qualities. Adegunwa et al. [48] improved the nutritional composition of *Chinchin* through the addition of millet flour. The authors showed that up to 30% wheat flour was replaced with millet flour without a pronounced effect on the physical properties of the snack but with improved nutritional qualities. Shrestha and Noomhorm [49] produced high-protein cookies using composite flours that contained

## **Figure 3.**

*Process flowchart for the production of vegetable leaf-fortified bread.*

blends of wheat-soy flour, defatted peanut, and pea flour, replacing up to 30% of wheat flour without any marked changes in the physical properties of the final products. Cowpea and peanuts flours have been reported to replace about 20% of wheat flour in the production of highly nutritious cookies without any significant effects on the physical characteristics of the products [46, 50, 51]. There are also reports of the production of high-fiber cookies using sesame seeds and pigeon pea flours [52]. Therefore, fortification with indigenous vegetable leaf powder is one of the new approaches aimed at improving the nutritional composition of pastry products.

Cookies and *Chinchin* were fortified with leafy vegetables. The major difference in the production technique of these two commonly consumed pastries lies in the final stage of production. While vegetable cookie doughs were baked, the *Chinchin* dough was fried; therefore, the equipment used and their operating conditions vary. For the two products, it is important to premix the wheat flour and the vegetable powder to be
