UTILIZATION OF ROSEMARY AND SAGE ESSENTIAL OILS IN THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE QUALITY OF CAKE AS ANTIMICROBIAL DURING HANDLING AND STORAGE

In this study, the essential oils of rosemary and sage were used to improve cake by two methods either addition or spraying at different concentra-tion on cup cake after 30 min. from baking. The components of essential oils were identified using Gas Chromatography (GC). These oils were eval-uated for inhibitory effect against some pathogenic bacteria especially that may contaminate cake dur-ing handling and storage periods. The effect of these oils at different levels and methods on the sensory characteristics of the produced cake was studied. The results showed that the addition of essential oil of rosemary or sage to cake formula at 1% level increased the acceptability of cakes. While when the rosemary or sage oil sprayed on the cup cake crust after 30 min. of baking at 0.06% or 0.18% level, resulted in a higher over all acceptability scores compared with the other lev-els and cake control. During the storage periods of cakes, using 1.5 % level of rosemary or 0.5% of sage oil added to the formula level resulted in a good acceptability after four and two weeks re-spectively, of storage periods. By using 0.06% concentrations of sage oil sprayed on cup cake crust after 30 min. of baking, the cake had accept-ed during the four weeks of storage periods. Mold growth appeared after 19 and 28 days due to addi-tion of 1% either rosemary or sage oils to the cake formula Meanwhile, the essential oils sprayed at level of 0.12 % of both, the mold appeared after 29 and 33 days for rosemary and sage respective-ly. Also by using the essential oils of rosemary or sage as spray on cake layers, most of bacterial strains and mold-yeast were not detected during the storage periods of cake at room temperature (25 – 30oC). The inhibition of growth of Salmonel-la and E-Coli was noted at 30 μl /disk of rosemary oil and 40 μl /disk for inhibition growth of Bacil-lus Cereus. While the inhibition growth of Salmo-nella, Staph aureus and E-Coli were observed at 40μl /disk of sage oil and at 50 μl/ disk for inhibi-tion growth of Bacillus Cereus.