How to Make Cannabis Infused Holiday Cookies

Step-by-step guide to make weed cookies for Santa.

Let’s make a batch of cannabis-infused iced gingerbread cookies with cannabutter. C’mon, I’ll show you how! Baking low dose cookie edibles is easier than you think, no fancy tools or equipment needed. I’ll even tell you exactly how many grams of flower to use to make ~5mg THC per cookie. This week’s issue for paid subscribers is a double-feature, you get a how-to guide AND bonus recipe! 

Vol. 12.5 // In This Issue: 

• Easy, minimal-smell cannabutter step-by-step instructions

• Cannamath: How much flower to use to get 5mg per cookie

• Holiday Cookie Recipe: Iced Gingerbread 

• Dessert Drop Alert: Reserve your Gingerbread “Trees”

Got old, dry weed laying around? Use it to make edibles. The potency may have decreased over time, but it’ll still work.  

What’s the easy button? Buy pre-made cannabutter and portion according to instructions. 

Fruit + Flower Unfurled is a subscriber-supported publication. Please consider joining as a paid subscriber to unlock access to all my recipes + guides for how to cook + bake with cannabis at home.

For $4.20/month, subscribe to this Substack and learn how to make your own edibles. The cost-savings is worth the investment. Think about how much you spend on edibles… $20 for a bag of 10 gummies. Or spend $20 for a 3.5g jar of flower that can make ~100 5mg edibles. Making your own at home is a fraction of the cost.

For beginners, I recommend the mason jar method for making cannabutter as the easiest process. It keeps the cannabis smell at a minimum, and doesn’t require you stirring over a stove for 4 hours. If you have a mason jar and an oven that goes down to 170°F you can do this at home. The entire process takes ~4 hours, not including cookie making and baking time. You can make the cannabutter a day or two before and store in the fridge until ready to use.  

How to Make Cannabutter 

STEP 1: Gather Materials

• Mason glass jar with metal lid

• 2.5 grams cannabis flower (~20% THC), coarsely ground

• 3/4 cup (1½ sticks / 170g) unsalted butter, melted

STEP 2: Calculate Dosing

For the Iced Gingerbread Cookie recipe below, you’ll need to make a batch of cannabutter with 350mg THC in the entire batch. Approximately 2.5 grams of 20% THC cannabis flower. If your flower is different % THC, double-check your cannamath. 

For reference, 2.5 grams of coarsely ground flower fills about 2 tablespoons. But you should not measure your flower by volume, buy a $10 pocket gram scale and weigh out the flower precisely to get more accurate dosing. 

STEP 2: Make Cannabutter 

Activate + Decarb: Preheat the oven to 240°F. Place coarsely ground cannabis flower into a small mason jar and gently crush the buds to break apart. Seal with the lid to reduce smell and heat for 40 minutes in the oven to decarb, which activates the THC. Using oven mitts, shake the mason jar at 20 minutes to evenly heat all the flower. Remove from the oven and let cool until the mason jar is safe to touch. The ground flower will look and smell lightly toasted. 

Infuse Cannabis into Butter: Decrease the oven temperature to 170°F. Add melted butter into the mason jar with activated flower. Seal the lid, shake lightly to mix, place into the oven and bake at 170°F for 2-3 hours to infuse THC into the butter. Remove from oven and set aside. When the jar is cool enough to handle, strain out the ground flower bits by pouring the melted cannabutter through a fine mesh strainer, sieve, or cheesecloth into a clean container. Discard the ground flower. 

Store your infusion in a cool, dark place, or refrigerated, until ready to use in your recipe. When the butter solidifies you may see separation from the milk solids, ghee and liquid leftover from the butter. It’s okay to use this liquid in baking and cooking, I stir to reincorporate it back into the butter as it resolidifies. You can also pour out the liquid and reserve just the clarified butter. 

Step 4: Make Cookies

I used star, snowflake and tree cookie cutter shapes that yielded 70 cookies. Depending on the size and shape of your cookie cutter the total number of cookies may differ. 

Reduced Oven Temperature: Bake cannabis-infused cookies at 340 degrees F, rather than the standard 350 degrees F, to preserve the cannabis plant’s natural terpene and cannabinoid profile. Some will naturally cook off and evaporate, but by reducing the temperature it will help keep as much as possible during the baking process. 

Triple-check Dosage After Baking: count the total number of cookies. 350mg divided by the total number of cookies is the approximate amount of mg THC per cookie. For those new to cannabis, it’s recommended to start at 5mg THC or less to start. More experienced edibles consumers can increase their dose accordingly. 

Amount of THC per cookie =  350mg / [total # of cookies] 

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Iced Gingerbread Cookie Recipe

SERVINGS:

Makes ~70 cookies at 5mg THC each