Cannabis sugar is the perfect way to liven up your favourite sweet treats. Here’s how to make it at home.

Cannabis has earned itself a special place in the kitchen. Whether you prefer to add it to sweet classics like brownies or savoury delicacies like butter chicken, there are countless ways to infuse your favourite dishes with a healthy dose of bud.

Until now, one of the most common ways to use weed in the kitchen was to incorporate infused butter or oil. But now, cannabis chefs have come up with a new way to cook with weed; cannabis sugar.

Here’s how to make it.

WHAT IS CANNABIS SUGAR?

I have to admit, it really took me some time to wrap my head around the science of making cannabis edibles the correct way. Now that I feel a bit more advanced in my culinary cannabis skills, I wanted to try something new.

Most of my cannabis recipe inspiration comes from Instagram or cannabis cooking shows on Netflix, and somewhere along the way, I saw someone making cannabis sugar.

I love the idea of cannabis sugar because like cannabutter or cannabis-coconut oil, once it’s made, it can act as a staple recipe to easily infuse all other recipes.

I also love the versatility of cannabis sugar, once it is made you can use it for so many different recipes including cannabis brownies, chocolate chip cookies, and even cocktails and drinks or a scoop in your morning recipe.

Plus, if you’re looking for a very, very potent recipe – you could use both cannabis coconut oil AND cannabis sugar together for a double dose of CBD or THC.

COOKING WITH WEED: SOME BASICS

Before we show you how to make cannabis sugar, it’s important to cover some basics on cooking with cannabis.

One of the most important steps to cooking with weed is decarboxylation. It basically involves baking weed at a low heat for roughly 35-40 minutes. This helps convert some of the THCA (basically an acidic, non-psychoactive compound found in live cannabis plant material) to THC, the active psychoactive compound that gets you stoned. After all, that’s why you’re here, right?

The most important factor for proper decarboxylation is heat. The heat essentially breaks down precursor THCA to THC. Whenever decarboxylating cannabis, make sure to keep your oven temperature at 120°C/250°F max. Any higher and you risk degrading THC and losing potency.

WHAT YOU NEED TO MAKE CANNABIS SUGAR

Unfortunately, this is not a quick recipe and there are a few things you need to do before you can even get started making infused sugar. Here’s what you need to do first:

1. Decarboxylate your cannabis flower
2. Make a cannabis alcohol tincture

• You can not make cannabis-infused sugar without the alcohol tincture
• You can not make cannabis sugar with coconut oil or any other type of fat

WHY THE COMPLICATED PROCESS?

Culinary cannabis truly involves a lot of science, and there are tried and true processes to follow in order to get the best quality final product.

Dried cannabis flowers do not naturally contain high amounts of THC or CBD, they contain THCA and CBDA, an acidic form of the cannabinoids.

Applying heat or solvents, in this case, heat and alcohol, decarboxylate the THCA and CBDA into the active forms of THC and CBD, a process called decarboxylation.

Skipping the decarbing process may result in a weaker final product with inactive, or non-intoxicating, effects.

The process of making a cannabis tincture is then used with alcohol as the solvent to extract the active cannabinoids THC and CBD from the plant matter, leaving you a concentrated cannabis extract (essentially the same process as to make vanilla extract!)

Once you have your cannabis alcohol tincture made, you are then going to pour the tincture directly over the white sugar and stir.

The final outcome of this recipe is based on the complete evaporation of all of the alcohol, leaving behind just the extracted cannabis oils bound to the sugar crystals.

HOW TO MAKE WEED SUGAR

Weed sugar is the perfect way to liven up any of your favourite sweet recipes. Here’s how to make cannabis sugar at home.

INGREDIENTS

• 3 grams cannabis
• 120ml high-proof alcohol, such as Everclear
• 100g granulated sugar

METHOD

1. Roughly grind/chop your weed to a coarse consistency. Spread it out on a baking tray lined with baking paper and bake at 120°C/250°F for 35-40 minutes. Make sure your temperature never exceeds this limit.
2. Reduce the oven heat to 93°C/200°F. Transfer your decarboxylated weed to a jar and cover with alcohol. Screw the lid on the jar, making sure it is tight and secure.
3. Shake the jar every 5 minutes for 20 minutes total. Strain the liquid through some cheesecloth into a clean bowl. Discard the solid plant matter.
4. Mix sugar into the strained alcohol solution. Spread evenly into a glass baking dish. Bake at 93°C/200°F, stirring regularly until the alcohol has evaporated and the sugar has a golden colour.

HOW TO MAKE WEED SUGAR

Weed sugar is the perfect way to liven up any of your favourite sweet recipes. Here’s how to make cannabis sugar at home.

INGREDIENTS

• 3 grams cannabis
• 120ml high-proof alcohol, such as Everclear
• 100g granulated sugar

METHOD

1. Roughly grind/chop your weed to a coarse consistency. Spread it out on a baking tray lined with baking paper and bake at 120°C/250°F for 35-40 minutes. Make sure your temperature never exceeds this limit.
2. Reduce the oven heat to 93°C/200°F. Transfer your decarboxylated weed to a jar and cover with alcohol. Screw the lid on the jar, making sure it is tight and secure.
3. Shake the jar every 5 minutes for 20 minutes total. Strain the liquid through some cheesecloth into a clean bowl. Discard the solid plant matter.
4. Mix sugar into the strained alcohol solution. Spread evenly into a glass baking dish. Bake at 93°C/200°F, stirring regularly until the alcohol has evaporated and the sugar has a golden colour.