haha, yeah that's totally my fault for not explaining how the game worked... sorry for that :/
To see what is the right special effect you have to, well... read what special effect a certain ingredients gives (there isn't really any other way sadly), and make sure to put that ingredient first, otherwise it will count you as a failure. And make also sure that the balancing is also right
The dots you're referring to, from how you're describing them it seems like you're talking about the minigame(s) that you need to complete for making the tea. Well, i was intending to make multiple minigames but in the end i didn't managed to do it and now all the minigames are the same: basically your job is to make sure that the circles never touches each other (drag them away with the mouse), otherwise you lose and you have to start the tea process from the start
As for the square, it's the tea you've done... Probably the reason why sometimes you was getting the tea, and why sometimes you was not it's because you triggered one of the cheat keys while button mashing...