Moisture migration in composite products can pose challenges
You may learn about moisture migration at uni, but it’s not until you experience what it can do to a lovely chocolate covered snack that you say “Respect!”, or like a old colleague of mine used to say “Ignore it at your peril”.
So here is the thing, take a lovely, crunchy, crispy biscuit. Put a dollop (this is a technical term, LOL!) of real freshly prepared oozing caramel. Then cover the whole thing in shiny, snappy (when set of course) chocolate 🍫. We are talking real chocolate here, not chocolate flavoured coating. You won’t have to wait long to see what happens next. Within a few days it will start to crack.
“But I did not see this on the samples I made in the lab!” I remember saying and scratching my head. Then my colleague reminder me that I had built up biscuit and caramel one day and put the chocolate on a day later…All this lovely moisture moving around and settling before putting on the chocolate.
There are things one can do to avoid it of course, answers on a postcard please, but best to consider all this early in a project, before factory trials.
#MoistureMigration #FoodTechnology #ProductDevelopment
There are things that can be done to manage or even avoid moisture migration, but best to consider them early in a project’s life