Cannabis cookies give you a delicious blank slate to flex your culinary creativity. If you’re a novice in the kitchen, following a cannabis sugar cookies recipe can be as easy as adding cannabutter to cookie dough.

If you’re more experienced, you can try out more exotic recipes. Don’t be afraid to be bold! We’ve seen recipes for sriracha and peanut butter cannabis cookies as well as chilled-out versions of the traditional Russian tea cake coated in powdered sugar.

No matter how you make them, hash cookies’ effects are guaranteed to last a while and provide deep relaxation. That’s why many people enjoy pot cookies when trying to treat chronic pain with cannabis, or other nagging conditions like cramps.

Start making your own delicious, medicinally potent batches of cannabis cookies at home using any (or all) of the following recipe guides.

Why Hash Cookie Effects Are So Different Than Smoking Weed

There are many good reasons that people enjoy the effects of hash cookies. Like other edibles, they last for hours at a time and have a higher degree of potency compared to smoking or vaping cannabis.

The difference in the edible high compared to the smoking high is two-fold. For one, smoking and vaping put the marijuana directly into your bloodstream. Inhaling vaporized or combusted weed pulls all of the active cannabinoids into your lungs. There, tiny sacs called alveoli absorb a large portion of the chemicals. These chemicals are then transported by your blood all throughout your body, including your brain.

Eating marijuana is a totally different experience. The THC must be indirectly absorbed into your bloodstream through your intestines as part of digestion. Also, putting marijuana’s cannabinoids through your digestive process means that the liver is directly involved.

Your liver normally breaks down ingested substances into things the body can use more readily or evacuate more easily through urine or feces. When THC reaches the liver, the liver subjects it to digestive enzymes that turn it into 11-hydroxy-THC.

11-hydroxy-THC is way more potent than regular THC, which is why edibles produce deeper effects that can stray into psychedelic territory.

Why do people prefer turning their edibles into baked goods? It’s a long-standing tradition that likely caught traction in medical patients with chronic pain.

An article in The New Yorker teases out some of the origins of baked good edibles from back in the decades when pot was still taboo. “In those days, dispensaries catered to ‘the medical-stoner community,’ heavy users and people with chronic pain.”

Gourmet edible expert Laurie Wolf, who the magazine dubs “The Martha Stewart of Edibles,” reflects on how these informal interactions used to go. “You’d say, ‘what kind of edibles do you have?’ They’d say, ‘well, my grandmother makes these pot brownies. And my stepmother’s cousin makes these.’”

Baked goods were likely chosen for a few reasons. Brownies and cookies were a more casual treat to carry with you compared to, say, a Tupperware container full of cannabis infused olive oil linguine. The sugar and fat of the baked goods also helped cover up the more unpleasant tastes of infused cannabutter or canna oil. Except they didn’t always do a good job.

Most homemade baked edibles tasted “dreadful,” reflects Wolf. “It was like somebody took a bud and dipped it in chocolate.”

Now, though, you can find recipes that go so much further than just adding in some cannabutter to a batch of cookie dough. People like Wolf have crafted all sorts of culinary cannabis creations, including desserts that wouldn’t look out of place in an upscale bakery’s display case.

You can make your own versions at home, too. We recommend you start small with the simple recipe below.

You’ll Need:

• 650 ml (2 ¾ cups) all-purpose baking flour
• ½ teaspoon of baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 350 ml (1 ½ cups) sugar
• 120 ml (½ cup) unsalted, softened butter
• 120 ml (½ cup) softened cannabutter
• 1 large egg
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

How to Make It:

1. Preheat your oven to 190 C (375 F)
2. Stir flour, baking soda, and baking powder together in a small bowl. Set aside.
3. Ensure both butter types are soft and at room temperature. Place them in a large bowl and add sugar. Fold the butter until sugar crystals form a uniform, creamy texture. Alternatively, use an electric mixer on a medium setting for 2-3 minutes.
4. Beat in your egg and vanilla with a whisk. Add in small handfuls of your dry flour mixture and fold gently. Your wet/dry mixture does not have to be perfectly uniform. Be careful of overstirring, which can make your flour taste gummy.
5. Take dough and gently form flattened balls. Or, roll out your dough with a rolling pin and cut out circle shapes. Thicker cookies will be chewier and moist, while thin ones will be more crispy. This recipe should create around 18 cookies. Place your unbaked cookies on an ungreased cookie sheet.
6. Bake for just 8 to 9 minutes or until cookies are golden brown on top. Remove from oven and allow to cool on sheet for around two minutes before placing cookies on wire cooling rack.

Tips for reducing odor when making cannabis oil

The trick for reducing odor is using the right tool for decarboxylation. The steam produced during cooking might not give off a pungent odor at first, but it gets stronger with time. It takes hours for the oil to finish, so you can imagine that the odor can build, and, if you are in the same room the whole time, you may not notice the gradual increase in dankness.

Using kitchen devices with rubber seals on their lids will allow you to lock in the majority of the odor during the cook. Finding a crock pot or pressure cooker with this feature is easy. The seal allows you to be strategic in where and when you open the lid.

Whether you take it outside or put it under your kitchen vent, not allowing the odor to fill your space is paramount when it comes to discretion. But accidents happen! If you find yourself in a situation where your space is too pungent, check out our article on how to get rid of the cannabis odor.

How to cook with your weed oil

Now that you have successfully infused your oil of choice, be sure to try a little before you make an entire meal. You want to make sure the dosage is right so the meal is delicious as well as enjoyable afterward.

You also want to be sure not to scorch the oil while cooking (just like when you are making the oil). It would be a shame for all that hard work to go to waste and to be left with a cannabis-tasting creation without any of the effects.

Now get cooking! I suggest finding a few of your favorite recipes and see if an infused-cannabis oil could work. Experimenting with different recipes is half the fun, and here are a few of our favorite recipes to get you going.