Bad edible experiences: Most, if not all, of us have been there and have had at least one. For years, I avoided consuming infused food altogether because of a single bad encounter.
Let me set the scene for you: It’s the early 2000s. I’m attending music school at Berklee in Boston, balancing the thrill of being surrounded by the most talented young musicians in the world and the excitement of living in a new city as a “country girl.” Social gatherings after class or rehearsal meant getting together and jamming over cheap beer—we were “financially challenged starving artists,” after all.
One weekend, we decided to go all out in honor of a friend’s birthday. Everyone was to bring a dish and beverages to share, and we would celebrate on the roof deck of our Kenmore Square apartment. At the time, I loved to cook and bake but had not begun my professional career in food or cannabis. I knew we needed something sweet, though, and my brain immediately went to cannabis-infused chocolate chip cookies. I scoured the internet for a how-to on making cannabutter, found something that seemed trustworthy (though, looking back, I had little to no education on how to do this properly), and got to work.
First, I decarbed cannabis flower in the oven, causing the entire floor of my apartment building to be saturated with the scent of weed for hours. I added it to melted butter to infuse, then immediately used the infused butter to make my cookies. Once baked off, my cookies had bits of plant matter in them, and I had absolutely no idea what the potency of each cookie would be.
Later that evening, the party started; I proudly distributed these cookies to some of my closest friends and ate one myself. The cookie itself was BAD; it tasted like I’d bitten into a bud, and the texture was terrible. About two hours later, disaster struck: I was hearing colors and in an absolute panic. After what felt like centuries of a full-blown meltdown, I wrapped myself in a blanket and put myself to bed. I woke up the following day, swearing that would be the beginning and end of my edible consumption, to say nothing of a career in baking with cannabis.
Fast forward a few years. I’d since finished my time at Berklee and gone on to complete a pastry arts program. I decided to give infused baked goods another go, and while the result was FAR more delicious than my first attempt, the dosing was still too high for most. My online searches and hours of research on properly infusing at home felt like navigating a minefield, leading me to a million dead ends. The final potency of these recipes ranged from 5 mg to 50 mg, a gap far too wide and irresponsible for most. I also found that many articles and cookbooks consider 10 mg to be a microdose of cannabis, which in my opinion is way too high, especially as a starting point. Even now, in 2024, many recipes fail to call out a THC percentage in whatever material is being used to infuse, which is vital information when calculating your target dose. But it’s no one’s fault; without access to testing labs and tested cannabis, how would anyone know where to start?
Cannabis tolerance is subjective and in no way “one size fits all.” It’s just like chocolate chip cookies. If you think about it, everyone has their ideal chocolate chip cookie. Maybe it’s soft, chewy, and slightly salty with milk chocolate chips, or perhaps it’s thin and crispy with globs of dark chocolate. Wherever you land on this controversial cookie topic, once you discover what you like, you stick with it. You hold onto that perfect recipe page—most often worn around the edges, stained with butter and flour—and proudly share it. Cannabis is no different. People have their preferred dose and way to consume. For some it’s flower; for others it’s higher, medicinal doses of THC in the form of a tincture. For someone like me? It’s low, accurately dosed, delicious edibles that I can confidently and proudly share with all of my 21+ friends and family, with no chance of a potentially harmful experience.
So, after all these years of trial and error, what’s the secret to MY favorite infused chocolate chip cookie recipe? We’re using chunks of my lab-tested Pot + Pan Baking Bar to infuse accurately. The cookie dough itself is made with brown butter, which provides a nuttiness that pairs beautifully with the bittersweet 70% dark chocolate I used to create the Baking Bar. The cookies are subtly salty, soft, and chewy, with just a hint of cinnamon to round out the flavors.
