Play Russian roulette with these hot or minty sweets – will you be lucky and get a cool minty sensation when you pop them into your mouth? Or will you get a fiery one which will make your mouth burn and your eyes water? You will need: 100 grams cream cheese 500 grams icing sugar (sifted) Peppermint essence Tabasco sauce Blue food colouring Red food colouring Two bowls Rolling pin Small biscuit cutters Greaseproof paper 1. Mix the cream cheese and 400 grams of the sifted icing sugar together in a bowl. 2. Divide the mixture in two and place one half in another bowl – label the bowls 1 and 2. 3. Take bowl 1 and add a few drops of blue food colouring and a teaspoon of Tabasco sauce – add more if you want the sweets to be really hot and you’re feeling really evil! Mix well and slowly add more icing sugar until you get a dough-like consistency. 4. Take bowl 2 and add a few drops of peppermint essence. Slowly add drops of red and blue food colouring until the colour of the mixture in both bowls is very similar. Mix well and slowly add more icing sugar until you get a dough-like consistency. 5. Take the contents of bowl 2 and using a rolling pin roll out into a thin layer. Cut into individual sweets using small biscuit cutters. Place on a sheet of greaseproof paper to dry. 6. Repeat step 5 for bowl 1. 7. When the surface of the sweets has dried out, mix them together in the same tin ready to hand out. What’s happening? Why do you get that burning sensation when you eat the chilli flavoured scream creams? The burning sensation you feel if you are unlucky enough to pick a chilli flavoured sweet is caused by a chemical called capsaicin. Capsaicin is normally found in chilli peppers and works by stimulating your pain fibres in much the same way as placing your hand on a hot iron would. However, don’t reach for the water to put out this fire. Capsaicin doesn’t dissolve very well in water so that inviting glass of water merely spreads the chemical around your mouth stimulating even more pain fibres. Fortunately, capsaicin dissolves really well in fat and alcohol so drinking a glass of milk will do the trick. Even if you can normally eat a hot curry these sweets can still catch you out. If you know that you are about to eat a hot curry then you can prepare your mind and body for the burning sensation and block out the pain. However, if you’re not expecting it your body will react more strongly to the signals from the activated pain fibres in your mouth so you feel like it really is on fire! Go back