Let’s be honest, not everyone who enjoys cannabis is excited about smoking it.
Thankfully in this day and age, there are plenty of other options to enjoy budd without having to smoke it.
After reading this article, you will know the difference between smoking and consuming weed, how to make weed butter, how to make cannabis cookies and an example of what happens when someone accidentally eats cannabis cookies.
For those of you not interested in smoking bud but still want to enjoy the effects, you are in luck. There are plenty of options including; a multitude of tinctures, oils, spreads, and edibles. One of the most popular and well-known alternatives to smoking weed is time tested classic weed cookie.
If you’ve never had an edible or are looking to learn how to make your own weed cookies from scratch, this article is perfect for you.
So, let’s start with the basics.
What is the difference between smoking cannabis and eating edibles? For further examples, we are going to stick with the classic weed cookie to represent all edibles.
Smoking and ingesting bud are two completely different experiences. Civilized Life broke down the difference into 5 sections; How the body absorbs tetrahydrocannabinol, onset time, the intensity of effects, duration of experience, and difficulty of dosing.
1. How the Body Absorbs Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)
When cannabis is smoked or vaporized, inhaling it delivers THC directly to the brain, which means we feel the effects quicker and absorb 50%-60% of the cannabinoids into our bloodstream.
Eating cannabis, like weed cookies, means it needs to digest fully before you can feel the effects. It has to pass through our digestive system and then we are only absorbing 10-20% of the compounds. When we eat edibles, like cannabis cookies, the THC also passes through the liver, where it metabolizes into 11-hydroxy-THC before re-entering the bloodstream. It also takes longer to leave the bloodstream than smoking it.
Although the effects come quicker with smoking, edibles (like weed cookies) can taste better and be a perfect option for those who don’t like the taste of cannabis or smoking.
2. Onset Time
Given the fact that it takes a cannabis cookie longer to digest, it makes sense that the onset time is far longer than with smoking. It takes 10-20 minutes to feel the effects of smoking, while it can take anywhere from 30-120 minutes to feel the effects of a weed cookie.
If you are looking for a longer-lasting but slightly delayed onset, a weed cookie might be your perfect bet. Cannabis cookies are a perfect time to plan ahead. Perhaps you’re looking for something to help you sleep or help with pain?
Enjoy a tasty weed cookie before dinner, eat dinner and then relax.
3. Intensity of Effects
Eating a weed cookie provides more intense effects because the digested THC converts to 11-hydroxy-THC which is a metabolite that easily crosses the blood-brain barrier and becomes much more potent, which much more intense effects.
Smoking cannabis provides a quicker and less intense effect, that is fleeting. Eating a weed cookie gives you longer-lasting, more intense effect, but takes more time to develop.
4. Duration of Experience
The duration of experience also varies between smoking weed and eating weed cookies. When you smoke cannabis, the effects last anywhere from 1-4 hours. When you eat a weed cookie, the effects can last between 4 and 10 hours. The duration depends largely on your tolerance, your dose and the strain of cannabis in your weed cookie (or cannabis)
If you are looking for something to provide quick relief for a shorter duration, weed cookies might not be your best bet.
5. Difficult to Dose
Cannabis cookies are harder to dose because it’s harder to accurately determine the amount of THC in each edible. If you are making cookies and using cannabis butter, there is no saying how much THC is in each weed cookie.
When you smoke, you know the exact dosage because it is rolled up into the smoking device.
Not everyone enjoys consuming cannabis or smoking it. Those who like to smoke sometimes prefer the quicker, less intense high while those who enjoy edibles enjoy the longer, drawn-out experience.
The great thing is with all of the options out there, there is something for everyone!
Now that we understand the difference between weed cookies and smoking weed, we can start talking about some great weed cookie recipes! Before we dive into our weed cookie recipe, let’s focus on the cornerstone for any type of edible treat, the weed butter. Without knowing how to make your own weed butter (or having access to some) your cookies will just be regular cookies!
The Canna School offers a great recipe for weed butter for your weed cookie, so we broke that down for you:
- The first step to making weed butter is grinding your weed again. Yes, one more time than you think. You want it ground as fine as possible so grind it once, let it cool off and then grind it again.
- Wrap your bud in cheesecloth and wrap it up with hemp cord, cooking twine or some type of string. (You don’t have to do this, but the quality of the weed butter will be lower)
- Warm-up a pot on the stove and add in the amount of butter you want to use.
- Keep the heat on low until the butter has completely melted.
- Once the butter has melted, add your finely ground weed and stir.
- Let the mixture cook on low for 2-3 hours and stir every 30 minutes.
- After 2-3 hours have passed, get a strainer that will strain out the ground cannabis.
- Strain the mixture (without the ground cannabis) into a container and let it cool in the fridge.
- At this point, you may be wondering “What should my dosage be?!” You’re in luck. Hempster offers a free weed dosing calculator to help with portion sizes and dosage levels.
Once your butter has cooled, use it in whatever you want… weed cookies perhaps?
Now, what you’ve all been waiting for!
The Weed Cookie Recipe!
What you need:
- Mixing bowl x 2
- Whisk
- Baking Sheets
- Oven
- Parchment Paper
Ingredients
- 3 Cups All-Purpose Flour
- 2 Cups Chocolate Chips
- 1 Cup Weed Butter
- 1 Cup White Sugar
- 1 Cup Brown Sugar
- 2 Eggs
- 2 Teaspoons Vanilla Extract
- 2 Teaspoons Hot Water
- 1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
- 1/2 Teaspoon Salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
- Whisk weed butter, and sugars together in a bowl; beat in eggs. Stir in the vanilla. Dissolve baking soda in hot water then add to the mixture.
- In your second mixing bowl, sift flour and salt; stir into weed butter mixture. Finally, add the chocolate chips.
- Get a baking tray & cover it in parchment paper. Place cookies with large spoonfuls of dough on the tray, evenly spaced apart. There should be about 24.
- Bake for about 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are nicely browned.
- Take them out, let the weed cookies cool and then enjoy them slowly!
- Make sure to put them in a Tupperware that marks them as weed cookies instead of regular cookies.
Our last step is incredibly important. If you did a good job on the weed cookies and there isn’t an aftertaste, you might find yourself forgetting that they are weed cookies or even worse, someone else might come in and eat some without realizing they are weed cookies.
We found a story online about someone who accidentally ate a weed cookie without realizing it.
Read on to see what happened!
“My boyfriend and I have never been consistent with edibles. We would enjoy cannabis cookies on occasions when we needed to really relax but hadn’t in a while. One of my boyfriend’s work friends left him a baggie with some cookies and brownies made by one of her friends.
Her friend had been a gourmet baker at a local bakery so we were overjoyed at the chance to try some of his delectable treats.
In the baggie were two cookies and three brownies. When you think about making cookies and offering them to people, it seems like a very small amount. That didn’t throw us off at all though (unfortunately). We were just pleased that any delectable treats he made would grace our taste buds.
My boyfriend ate one of the brownies the night we got the bag, but we went to sleep shortly afterward so he wasn’t able to realize they were ‘special’.
That weekend, we had planned to go on a big hike for our Saturday off. Both he and I worked hectic schedules and didn’t find a lot of days that were completely open.
We got up early and began making preparations for our hike and errands for the day. Before we left for the grocery store, I popped one of those brownies to cure my sweet tooth. As we left the grocery store (after I added a bunch of unnecessary items to our cart) I looked in the rearview mirror and noticed my eyes were glassy. I had allergies and it was the summer, so I didn’t think much about it.
Right after lunch, we remembered we had the cookies from our friend. We gobbled them up for a midday dessert and then continued packing. About half an hour later, my boyfriend turned to me with a look that could only be described as horror, spread across his face.
“Um, I think those were special cookies.”
I looked back at him inquisitively.
“No way. I feel totally fine. I think you’re being paranoid. There’s no way!”
His paranoia started to spread over to me and I began second-guessing myself. Maybe the red-eye wasn’t from allergies…
We went back and forth fretting over whether they were weed cookies or just regular cookies.
“No way, they aren’t! I didn’t taste ANYTHING”
“Yeah, but who gives you a small baggie with an uneven number of each sweet in such small portions??”
“I don’t know! Nice people trying to share?”
We went back and forth for what seemed like hours before we decided to walk out to the car and give it a test drive. We agreed that if I felt weird at all, we would turn around and come right home.
As we walked outside and continued fretting about whether or not we had eaten real cookies or cannabis cookies, we proceeded to walk in a loop past my car five times. On that last loop, we both looked at each other and started laughing.
Yup, they were definitely weed cookies. There was nothing left to do but go back inside and wait until they had taken their toll.
We went back inside, texted our friend to let her know what had happened, and enjoyed the rest of our unintentional weed cookie journey.
Later that evening, our friend responded and couldn’t believe what had happened. She told us she specifically gave us a small bag and had told my boyfriend that the cookies were weed cookies. He just hadn’t remembered she mentioned that and forgot to spread the message.
Needless to say, the three of us still laugh about that to this day.”
All of that to say, don’t be that person to your friend. Always mark your weed cookies and enjoy responsibly. We hope you enjoyed the weed cookie recipe listed above. Let us know if you ended up trying it!
If you don’t feel like making your own weed cookies or cannabutter and you have your medical card, feel free to pop by Everest (or scope us out online first)! We have a variety of ‘special’ cookies to satisfy every sweet tooth.
