Appearance of white spots on the wafer cone, how to resolve?

Dear Alexandre,

First of all; I’m not an ice cream cone expert. But I have been dealing with different types of baking belts and sheets for many years.

My experience is that white spots like these ones can be related to heat variations on the contact surface of the plate or belt, during baking. Something is different in these areas. 

A few possibilities but of course not limited to;

Variation in color of belt/plate

Dirt on belt/plate or on pattern tool

Uneven shape of belt/plate

Steam during process?

Good luck.

Staffan@Bandaid

Hi Alexandra,

The formation of brown colour on baked products such as rolled wafer using just Sucrose (white sugar) in the recipe is due to Caramelisation which takes place at a temperature of 150˚C and above. The edges of the wafer reach this temperature sooner than the centre which results in dark edges and pale centre.

To reduce this uneven colour you need to add to the recipe some ingredients that form brown colour at lower temperatures by a browning process known as the Maillard reaction. Ingredients such as invert sugars and dairy ingredients such as milk powder in a batter with an alkaline pH of 7.5 cause browning by the Maillard reaction.

I would suggest you add 2% invert sugar, 1% milk powder and 0.2% Sodium Bicarbonate to the wafer batter and hopefully this will improve the uneven colour

Andrew Hughes

Good morning, Alexandra,

my apologies for the late reply.  I wanted to wait for the return of our wafer specialist Angelika before replying to you. She also assumes a heat problem. This is her complete answer:

"The white spots can have several causes:

1) Non-optimal machine settings

a) The burners are not optimally positioned under the baking plates and thus lead to different colouring of the wafer sheets.

b) The baking temperature is too high. This causes the wafers to not foam optimally, as water vapour forms between the baking plate surface and the product. The product then does not have sufficient contact with the baking plate and is not browned. Bright spots appear.

2) Not optimal flour quality and therefore very high water content in the recipe.

This leads to strong steam formation and separates the protein from the starch - the appearance becomes spotty.

Judging from the pictures, I would guess that the baking temperature is too high. To check this, it is advisable to check the temperature directly on the baking surfaces with a contact thermometer. Otherwise, first reduce the baking temperature and see if the colouring becomes more even."

I hope this gives you the right hints to solve the problem, should it still exist.

Kind regards,

Lutz