The fruit-filled snack bars were pr

The fruit-filled snack bars were produced at the Plant &
Food Research test bake facility in Christchurch, New
Zealand, using standard industry conditions and procedures.
A modified commercial casing recipe (Table 1) was
used and filled with a commercial high °Brix (70–80°Brix),
low water activity (Aw, 0.65), bake-stable apricot fruit filling
(Wild, Germany; http://www.wild.de). The casing dough
was extruded through a Rheon Cornucopia encrusting
machine (Model KN400, Rheon USA, Huntersville, NC).
The filling was extruded from the inner nozzle (14 mm
diameter) and the casing co-extruded in the gap between
the inner (16 mm) and outer (20.4 mm) nozzles. The cylinder
of filled dough was fed through a compression roller to
give a thickness of approximately 10 mm and cut into
approximately 100-mm long segments, each weighing
approximately 46 g. After cutting, 18 pieces of filled dough
were placed on a greased aluminum baking tray and were
baked for 17 min in a Baker Perkins rotary oven (Baker
Perkins NZ Ltd., Christchurch, New Zealand) at full top
heat (180C)