How to Make Pot Brownies That Taste Great

First, let’s dispel a myth here: weed edibles are not scary.

They don’t have to be too strong and they don’t have to taste like a freshly mowed lawn collided with a cake from the supermarket.

That brownie your sister’s cousin brought to the party that gave you a bad time? Forget about it.

Here are all of the steps of how to make pot brownies, from activating your herb, to making the cannabutter or canna oil, to the actual brownies themselves.

The only thing you need to fear from this recipe? Being too delicious.

Start with Cannabutter or Cannabis Oil That’s Perfectly Dosed

Edibles are wonderful because they give you a longer, deeper high than other ways of using cannabis, but they also take longer to hit. This means people tend to overeat and take too high of a dose or are simply not used to the strength of an edible compared to a few hits off a bowl or joint.

This means people tend to overeat and take too high of a dose or are simply not used to the strength of an edible compared to a few hits off a bowl or joint.

But you can be a great green chef and host of other people’s edible journey by learning how to make pot brownies that have a (relatively) a uniform dose in each piece. Here’s how it works:

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1. Know Your Strain

If you know the THC content for the strain of pot you have, you’re all set and can dose this perfectly. If not, you can still get pretty close.

If you don’t know the THC content of your flower, you can estimate around 12 percent, based on existing studies, with better herb on the higher end of potency.

We’ll use that 12 percent figure for the sake of this exercise.

2. Weigh out Your Ground Herb (Warning: Requires Math)

Knowing how to make pot brownies that everyone can enjoy starts with buying a kitchen scale. After that, the formula’s pretty simple.

If your weed is 12 percent THC, then a gram of flower weighed out is going to contain 120 milligrams (mg) of THC (1 gram = 1,000 mg and 12 percent of 1,000 is 120. Yay, math!). So if you’re making a tray of 10 brownies with a gram of THC, each brownie is going to have approximately 12 mg of THC in it.

Alternately, you could just use this sweet Edible Dosage Calculator.

3. Figure Out How Much Oil or Butter You Need

This is important for getting your dose right and also helps if you want to make a bulk batch of canna oil or butter to freeze and use for other green dishes you might learn how to make. Pot brownies aren’t the be-all, end all!

For this recipe, you need 140 grams of butter or oil, so when you extract the THC from your flower, either just make enough for one recipe or use a multiplier this number so that you know the total THC level in the batch.

So, if you have 140 grams of butter or oil and are using 1 gram of 12 percent THC herb, then you’ve got 120 mg of THC in the batch. But if you want to double it, just use two grams of herb and 280 grams of butter or oil and you’ve got a second brownie batch-worth you can save for a rainy day.

Doing all of this prep is a little time-consuming, but worth it for the control it gives you. If you like them stronger, make them stronger. But now you’re empowered to choose.

Choose Your Medium: Butter or Oil?

Whether you choose to make cannabutter or canna oil is a matter of preference and circumstance. Finding how to make pot brownies that work for you requires some experimentation.

But first, we’ll start with some prep that you’ll have to do no matter what. Here’s what you’ll need:

1. Your pre-measured, ground herb.
2. A baking tray
3. Parchment paper
4. An oven set to 105 C
5. Soy lecithin (if desired)

Grind up an amount of herb to the strength you want according to the THC formula from earlier. Set your oven to 100 C and let it come up to temperature.

Decarboxy-what?

In the meantime, roll out a sheet of parchment paper on your baking tray and spread the ground herb in a thin layer across it. You may want to weigh the parchment paper down as it tends to curl if you’re not using a larger (and therefore heavier) amount of weed.

Place the tray in the oven and set your oven timer for 25 minutes.

The goal here is to decarboxylate your herb, which is a fancy way of saying “get the most THC out of it.”

Decarboxylation at a low oven temperature converts the inactive THCA in happy, active THC, thereby allowing you to get the most out of your cannabis when you turn it into butter or oil.

You wanted to learn how to make pot brownies that taste great? This is how.

Now, let’s make some canna cooking fat.

Making Cannabutter

The big benefit of cannabutter over canna oil is its richness. I’m not saying you have to use butter when choosing how to make pot brownies that taste best for you. Canna oil is easier to make, but butter is, well, butter.

Butter is delicious, friends.

To make cannabutter, select how the amount of unsalted butter you need for your desired recipe as well as any extra (use at least a couple of sticks), and clarify the butter. Clarifying butter removes the dairy solids and gives it a higher cooking temperature, which you’ll want since making cannabutter requires several hours on the stove.

Ghee Wiz

You can also shortcut this process by using store-bought clarified butter or ghee (which is just clarified butter used in Indian cooking).

Get your butter going in a saucepan at low heat, then add your decarboxylated herb and keep it at a bare simmer for 2-3 hours, stirring occasionally to make sure it isn’t burning.

After 2-3 hours, remove the saucepan from the heat, strain out the cannabis solids, and you’ve got fresh cannabutter ready for your brownies.

Making Canna Oil

Making canna oil follows a similar process to making canna butter, with the exception that it’s more forgiving and less likely to burn.

In case you’re wondering, note that canna oil made this way is not the same as CBD oil. CBD oil is for pain relief contains very little THC, whereas our oil is all about maximizing our THC.

You can use any cooking oil, but my preference is coconut oil. Why? It’s 100 percent fat and has a lot of saturated fat, which binds to THC extremely well, so you get the most out of the herb you have.

Take your coconut oil and bring it to a low simmer in a saucepan. Then, drop in your decarboxylated herb and let it go for 2-3 hours.

After that, simply strain the herb out of the oil and you’re good to go.

The big difference here is you don’t need to babysit the canna oil. It won’t burn as long as it’s on a low heat and you can go walk away, enjoy a blunt, and spin up some music as the canna oil makes itself.

Use Lecithin or Not to Use Lecithin?

This is a little inside baseball, so bear with it. At this point, you’ve made your canna butter or oil and can call it a day.

But if you want to up the potency and effect of your edibles (this is how to make pot brownies that really pack a punch), you can also add a little bit of lecithin to the mixture.

Lecithin – which you can get in soy or sunflower form – is a phospholipid that helps make THC water soluble. It doesn’t increase the amount of THC in your canna butter or oil, but it will make it easier for your body to use and access.

In other words, lecithin helps edibles hit stronger and faster.

Depending on what you’re going for, that may be a good or bad thing, and it is an extra step.

Mind the Ratio

As for the ratio, add a tablespoon of lecithin per every cup of butter or oil that you’re using, if you choose to go that route.

If you want to be economical and get the most out of your bud, this is one more way to squeeze even more effect from a modest amount of flour. Want to be even more economical? Check out our guide on how to grow weed on a budget.

Now give yourself a pat on the back: You’re finally ready to learn how to make pot brownies for real!

The Actual, Mundane Secret of How to Make Pot Brownies That Taste Incredible

At this point, you can take everything you’ve learned so far about how to make pot brownies, grab a box of store-bought mix and put together a perfectly adequate treat that will get you exactly as high as you want to be. But if you want brownies that taste really great, here’s the secret:

Are you ready for it?

It’s going to blow your mind…

You need a great brownie recipe.

So let’s use one.

A quick note before starting: Depending on whether you chose to make cannabutter or canna oil, you could adjust the amount you use. Butter is only 81 percent fat (the rest is water), so some cooks prefer to modify the amount of oil they use to 0.81 of whatever the recipe recommends, making up the rest with water.

For ease and peace of mind, you can swap canna oil/cannabutter 1:1. But figuring out how to make pot brownies that way you like it is a journey to chart yourself. The main difference is that edibles made with canna oil tend to be a little denser than ones made with canna butter unless you adjust the ratio.

On to the recipe.

The Recipe

Now you’re going to make these bad boys from scratch, an adaptation of Alice Medrich’s famous recipe.

How to make pot make pot brownies that taste amazing is no different than making regular brownies that taste amazing. It’s more work, but you’ll never go back.

Ingredients:

• 140 grams cannabutter or canna oil
• 250 grams of granulated sugar
• 65 grams of unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs, cold
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 65 grams all-purpose flour
• 75 grams walnuts, pecans, or other nuts (totally optional – you do you)

First, preheat your oven to 160 C and take out a 20×20 cm square baking pan and line it with foil or parchment paper.

Melt, Mix, Mix

Now for some double-boiler action.

Grab a heatproof bowl you can fit over a skillet of just-simmering water and put in your canna butter (or oil), cocoa powder, sugar, and salt. Stir these ingredients together as your canna butter (or oil) gently melts and beat together.

The ingredients should be “ouch hot” – hot enough so when you dip a finger in, you pull your hand out quickly. The mixture should look a little coarse at this point.

Next, remove the bowl from the saucepan and let cool slightly before adding the vanilla extract and your eggs, one at a time, until the batter thickens. Finally, add the all-purpose flour and mix it well with a spatula or wooden spoon until all the flecks of flour are gone and the batter itself achieves a smooth consistency.

Level Out Your Batter

Pour the batter mixture into your baking dish and use a spatula to even out the mixture if necessary. All that work learning how to make pot brownies that are dosed evenly will be for naught if your batter is thicker at one end of the pan than the other.

That’ll lead to much higher dose on one end and much smaller dose on the other.

Bake your homemade canna brownies for 25 minutes or until a toothpick stuck in the center comes out nearly clean (a little batter is perfect).

Let the brownies cool completely, remove the parchment paper (or foil), and divide them up into however many servings you want. The great thing about knowing the total amount of THC in your batch is it makes the serving math easy.

200 mg of THC in your batch? Cut into 25 pieces and you’ve got 25 8 mg brownies.

Enjoy the High

That’s it. Sure, it’s a lot of steps, but when you taste them it’ll be worth it. Heck, now you might even be ready to start growing pot of your own.