Cannabis cookies come in a variety of shapes, colors and names like hash brownies, space cakes and others. You can basically infuse cannabis into any recipe by making butter or oil infused with cannabis and then using it as you would with non infused recipes. Although you don’t have to use cannabutter for infusing and can use kief, oils and other concentrates even ground cannabis buds, cannabutter is easy to make and is therefore a popular base for any edible.
Cannabis cookies have always been a popular way to medicate or get stoned and many people have made them themselves, but especially with legalization of cannabis, edibles have become a very popular choice of medication with many patients and recreational users alike. With the re-development of cannabis industry, many commercial products like Herbal Infuser or Magical Butter offer a fast and care-free way of making your own edibles.
Brief history of cannabis edibles
Eating cannabis has a long history, dating back to about 50,000 years ago – ethnobotanists believe it was one of the first plants people explored. Many cultures have used anything from its roots and seeds to leaves and flowers, both as food and for medicinal and recreational uses. Ancient Chinese emperors made cannabis tea, Hindus drank bhang (a intoxicating mix of warm milk, cannabis, ginger and garam masala) which is still allowed and authorized in India and nomadic tribes of Morocco ate mahjoun (a mixture of hash, dried fruits, chopped nuts and various spices).
In the 1840s so called ‘Hashish-Eaters Club‘ was formed, which included Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas and Charles Baudelaire and hashish eating even appeared in 1001 Nights, as a favorite treat of artists, healers and mystics. Fitz Hugh Ludlow described his experiences of eating a cannabis/hashish tincture from a local apothecary in “The Hasheesh Eater”, published in 1857.
The ‘rebirth’ of cannabis edibles began in 1950s with the publishing of “The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook”, that contained a recipe for “Haschich Fudge”, reintroducing the notion of eating and cooking with cannabis. During the 1980s and 1990s, a popular cannabis activist named Mary Jane Rathbun ran her outlaw kitchen and distributed cannabis cookies to AIDS patients, which led her to appear on court on numerous occasions. Known as Brownie Mary, she became a leader for medical cannabis movement, which helped pave the way for passage of Prop 215, which made California the first state to legalize medical cannabis in 1996.
Before you do anything – decarb
In its raw form, cannabis mostly contains cannabinoids in acid form with an extra carboxyl ring or group (COOH) attached to their chain. So while THC is present, THCA is the one that prevails in the raw form. Although THCA (and other cannabinoids in their acid forms) has neuroprotective, anti-inflammatory and other medical properties it isn’t intoxicating so to get the most out of your cannabis in edibles, we need to decarb it first.
By heating, which occurs normally when smoking or vaping, THCA becomes THC so we need to expose our buds to heat. Different cannabinoids and terpenes evaporate at different temperatures so in order to keep most of them we need to keep an eye on the temperatures. To decarb properly for best potency simply grind your buds, put them on a sheet of baking paper and into the oven for at least 30-40 min. THCA converts to THC at ~105 C so you want to keep your temperatures between 105-125C. At temperatures higher than 150C all cannabinoids and terpenes start to loose their structure and you should keep your temps below that.
When converting THCA to THC we lose a certain percentage, so if we have 100g of cannabis that has 20% THCA content, that means that we have 200mg of THCA in every gram of cannabis or 20,000mg in 100g of cannabis. To convert THCA to THC we simply multiply it by 0.88 so 20,000mg of THCA would make for maximum of 17,600mg of THC when decarbed.
[THCA content] x 0.88 = [decarbed THC content]
The same can be applied for all plant matter like kief, which when decarbed can be infused into anything else or just sprinkled on top of whatever you’re making. Some research suggests that about 75% of THCA is actually converted to THC, so to have more precise calculations, total number should be multiplied by 0.75.
How to make Cannabutter
Although there are many different ways to make cannabutter, they all end up with the same result in the end and we’ll show you the easiest one. To make cannabutter you’ll need 0.5kg of unsalted butter, 100g of cannabis and a cup of water.
After you’ve ground up and decarbed your cannabis, put it in a pot with the butter and a cup of water to prevent butter from burning. Heat it on low temperature and simmer for 3-6 hours. The longer you heat it, the more cannabinoids will get infused with the butter, usually about 60% end up in the finished product.
When the butter has finished infusing, use a strainer to get rid of leftover plant matter and impurities and put it in the fridge over night to harden. Usually after 12 hours, butter will be hard enough for you to use. Hardened butter will be on top with the residual water below it, simple remove it or strain the water and you have your cannabutter.
Similar processes are involved if you want to infuse other things, like oils or other dairy products – just watch out for the temperatures and don’t let it burn. Some more volatile compounds found in cannabis, like terpenes and flavonoids have lower boiling points, so working at lower temperatures helps to preserve them. Higher temperatures may also cause for some cannabinoids to change their forms and transform into different compounds.
So, if we started with the 100g of our favorite buds with 20% THCA, which gave as 17,600mg of decarbed THC, we’ve end up with 10,560mg of THC in our cannabutter.
[mg of decarbed cannabis] x [0.6] = maximum THC in the cannabutter
Once made, the cannabutter can last you for months, if properly stored and can be used to infuse and cook with any meal.
How to calculate the dosage of THC in edibles
To calculate the dosage per cookie or slice of your space cake simply divide the total mg that you got when infusing the butter with the number of cookies or slices you got from your cookie mix. So if we ended up with 10,560mg of THC in 0.5kg of cannabutter and got 50 cookies from our cookie mix, each cookie would end up with approximately 211,2mg of THC in it.
It’s important to note that those are maximum possible values and depending on your prior processes of decarbing, infusing and baking you may end up with lower doses.
Weed cookies recipe
To make your weed cookies you can use any cookie recipe and just replace the butter with your cannabutter. Here is the recipe of a basic pot brownie:
- 1/2 cup (65 grams) all-purpose flour
- 1 1/4 cups (250 grams) granulated sugar
- 5 tablespoons (70 grams) cannabutter
- 2 large eggs plus 1 egg yolk, cold
- 3/4 cup (130 grams) chocolate chips
- 3/4 cup (75 grams) unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1/3 cup vegetable oil
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/8 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
Put butter and sugar in the microwave until the butter has melted, whisk vanilla, egg yolk and eggs and stir in the cocoa powder and oil. Stir in the flour, cornstarch, salt and baking soda until combined and then stir in the chocolate chips.
Spread the mix evenly into a pan and place it in a preheated oven at 160C. Bake for half an hour or until the brownies are set. Let it cool completely before cutting and serving. If stored in airtight container at room temperature they can last up to 3-7 days.
So, if we ended up with 10,560mg in 0.5kg of our cannabutter that means that 1g of cannabutter has 21,12mg (10560/500) of THC in it and we used 70g in this recipe which means that our brownies have a maximum of 1478,4mg of THC in them. If sliced on 12 pieces each piece would have 123,2mg of THC.
General advice for eating and making cannabis edibles
Any edibles take longer time to start working, it may take up to 2-3 hours or more for some people, but generally, you should start feeling the effects about half an hour after ingestion. If you’re not feeling the effects, it’s better to give it more time than to ingest more and find yourself too high.
When eaten, THC enters you bloodstream and goes through the liver, where delta-9-THC becomes delta-11-THC, which is more psychoactive and stronger. Usually, edibles will give you a longer lasting, more intense high so be careful about dosing and do overdo it.
To make edibles, you can use any strain, depending on your preference and as long as you’ve had temperature in control, they should provide the same type of experience as when you consume the same strain in any other way, just more intense. Sativa-dominant strains will give you a more energetic kind of high while Indica-dominant strains will give you more of body relaxing type of feeling.
When decarbing, slight unpleasant smells of burning weeds will come from the oven as well as when infusing your butter but once you’ve made it, cooking with it won’t give out any strong cannabis smells.
Although cannabutter has the taste and slightly the color of cannabis, depending on your recipe, when made into edibles, they shouldn’t have a strong or unpleasant aromas or smells and shouldn’t be much different in both look,taste and feel from normal versions of the same recipe.
If you get too high, just relax, drink some water, take a hot shower, sit or lie down and take large and slow breaths. Some people report that they smelling ground up red pepper and drinking lemon juice helps with too intense feeling. Ingesting or vaping some CBD should help and counteract some of the too intense effects of THC too.
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