Treats

Treats is a 1975 play by Christopher Hampton about a love triangle.

Plot summary

The play is set in 1974, London, in a single room in Ann's flat. There are three characters: Ann, her former boyfriend Dave, and her lover Patrick.

Ann and Patrick are contentedly sitting at home one night, listening to music and talking, when Dave breaks in. His violent temper is clear from the beginning: He punches Patrick on the nose, then refuses to leave, even as Ann threatens to call the police. It soon turns out that Ann used Dave's work trip to Cyprus to break up with him as she had long been planning to do. Now a colleague from work—her new boyfriend, Patrick—moved in with her. Dave refuses to accept the situation and demands an explanation, bullying Ann, and being overly friendly with Patrick. Ann seems determined not to listen to him, particularly when the two men bond against her. Dave tells her she would be bored out of her mind by Patrick and asks her to marry him. She refuses. Dave, however, is crafty and clever enough to succeed: he wins her back and moves back in at the end, succeeding in making both of them miserable.

Food coloring

Food coloring, or color additive, is any dye, pigment or substance that imparts color when it is added to food or drink. They come in many forms consisting of liquids, powders, gels, and pastes. Food coloring is used both in commercial food production and in domestic cooking. Due to its safety and general availability, food coloring is also used in a variety of non-food applications including cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, home craft projects and medical devices.

Purpose of food coloring

People associate certain colors with certain flavors, and the color of food can influence the perceived flavor in anything from candy to wine. Sometimes the aim is to simulate a color that is perceived by the consumer as natural, such as adding red coloring to glacé cherries (which would otherwise be beige), but sometimes it is for effect, like the green ketchup that Heinz launched in 1999. Color additives are used in foods for many reasons including:

Royal icing

Royal icing is a hard white icing, made from softly beaten egg whites, icing sugar (powdered sugar), and sometimes lemon or lime juice. It is used on Christmas cakes, wedding cakes, gingerbread houses and many other cakes and cookies, either as a smooth covering, or in sharp peaks. Glycerine is often added to prevent the icing from setting too hard. When placing icing on cakes, Marzipan is usually used under the royal icing in order to prevent discoloration of the icing.

Usual proportions are 2 egg whites to 1 teaspoon of lemon juice, 1 teaspoon of glycerine, and around 1 pound of sugar depending on the application.

As well as coating cakes and biscuits, royal icing is used to make decorations such as flowers and figures for putting on the cake. The Royal Icing is piped into shapes which are allowed to harden on a non-stick surface. These can then be arranged to create edible decorative effects on a variety of sweet foods. The Glycerine must be omitted for this purpose. Royal Icing is often used to create snow scenes but is also used as an edible adhesive - particularly for gingerbread houses.

Baking powder

Baking powder is a dry chemical leavening agent, a mixture of a carbonate or bicarbonate and a weak acid, and is used for increasing the volume and lightening the texture of baked goods. Baking powder works by releasing carbon dioxide gas into a batter or dough through an acid-base reaction, causing bubbles in the wet mixture to expand and thus leavening the mixture. It is used instead of yeast for end-products where fermentation flavors would be undesirable or where the batter lacks the elastic structure to hold gas bubbles for more than a few minutes, or to speed the production. Because carbon dioxide is released at a faster rate through the acid-base reaction than through fermentation, breads made by chemical leavening are called quick breads.

Formulation and mechanism

Most commercially available baking powders are made up of sodium bicarbonate (also known as baking soda or bicarbonate of soda) and one or more acid salts. Typical formulations (by weight) call for 30% sodium bicarbonate, 5-12% monocalcium phosphate, and 21-26% sodium aluminium sulfate. The last two ingredients are acidic: they combine with the sodium bicarbonate and water to produce the gaseous carbon dioxide. The use of two acidic components is the basis of the term "double acting." Another typical acid in such formulations is cream of tartar, a derivative of tartaric acid. Baking powders also include components to help with the consistency and stability of the mixture.

Rosanna Pansino

Rosanna Pansino (born June 8, 1985) is an American baker, actress, and YouTube personality. She is best known for her nerdy-themed cooking show Nerdy Nummies, one of the most popular baking shows on YouTube. She also starred as Violet in the animated YouTube series Broken Quest. She is also a singer. Her first song, "Perfect Together," was released on February 14, 2015 and currently has over 8 million views and counting

YouTube Career

Pansino's grandmother had a passion for baking that Pansino inherited. She began her YouTube channel after she was encouraged by a few of her professional YouTuber friends. She started to make videos on YouTube to get more comfortable in front of a camera. Her baking show started after she filmed the process of making themed treats at a party and gained momentum as her viewers began to enjoy it and started to request more. Because she never saw a geeky baking show on television or the Internet, Pansino decided to create her own. Rosanna Pansino has uploaded more than 100 cake, cookie and cupcake recipes as part of the Nerdy Nummies series. Its success has driven her channel to 5 million total subscribers and an average of 75 million views per month.