Wheat flour, pineapple, baking fat, and sugar were procured from Ogige Market in Nsukka, Enugu State while date fruit was procured from Katako Market in Jos, Plateau State. The date palm fruit pulp (powder) was produced by washing the date palm fruits with water to remove adhering dirt, followed by removing the seeds (de-pitting) of the fruit manually and cut into small pieces with the aid of a knife and weighing the dried date palm fruit. The pulp with pericarp was then oven dried at 75 °C for 6–8 h and subsequently milled using a hand milling machine and sieved through a 0.35 mm mesh sieve to obtain fine homogenized particles (Peter-Ikechukwu et al., 2017 ). The pineapple juice was made from ripe pineapples. The pineapples were washed with clean water, peeled, and cut/diced with clean knives. The pineapple pulps were blended using a juice blender and the juice was filtered using a muslin cloth to remove all solids and colloidal particles. Schematic production flow of date flour and pineapple juice are shown in Figs. 1A and 1B, respectively.
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