Today is

By: Ikedi Ani-okoye.

Introduction to sweets

Nothing is more delightful than a clever sucker. All you need is a hard sweet mold and a little time in the kitchen, and it’s easy to make a batch of creative sweets. These are especially popular with the children.

With sweet molds, you can make treats for any occasion, at a fraction of the cost of buying them from the store, and have a lot of fun doing it! It's amazing how satisfying it is to see the work of your own hands turn out so beautifully.

Sweets for Christmas

At Christmas time we all like to indulge in rich foods, such as Christmas pudding and Christmas Cake, sweets and candy. During the Second World War when food was rationed, children went without sweets. Sugar was rationed to 8oz (225g) per person per month. Sugar is the main ingredient of sweets, which is why they were so scarce and why they became a luxury item.

Making sweets as a gift

When you create sweets as gifts you will find that you are having a great time and spending less money than you usually do. It is a great feeling to get a gift that someone has spent time on as well, so your friends and family will love it!

Find great packages to house your sweets. Holiday tins are perfect. Get one tin per family. Then start baking your treats and place them decoratively in your tins. Remember that you will need to deliver them soon after baking. If you wait too long, they will not be edible at all. So, this is something you might want to do the week of the holiday and take them around personally to hand them out.

Indian sweets

Sweets “mithai”, of which the Indians are inordinately fond, are given as presents”. These sweets are made with a combination of any of paneer (similar to cottage cheese), semolina, chickpea flour, thickened milk, wheat flour, coconut, grated carrots and spiced with any of cardamom, nutmeg or cinnamon with nuts and raisins added for texture.

How sweets make you feel good

The whole concept of sweets making you feel good focuses around neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters are responsible for the human emotions. Tryptophan is one of the chemicals the human brain needs to make serotonin. Chocolate contains this chemical and when you consume it your brain begins making more serotonin. When your levels of serotonin are increased, you will feel happy.

CONCLUSION

Sweets like chocolate might be the thing you need to boost your mood when you are feeling down. You may not get the same effect as you would from an anti-depressant medication or some other treatment method, but you may feel pretty good after eating that delicious chocolate bar. So go ahead and indulge every now and then on those sweets that you love to eat.