After the fact that CBD can be great for your health, one of the best things about CBD is the fact that you have such a choice about how to take it. Legally, you can vape it, eat it, let it get absorbed under your tongue, take it like a tablet or even rub it in.
And which method you use can depend on what you’re using it for, but also, what you feel like doing at the time.
CBD edibles are becoming more and more popular as more and more people are turning to CBD as a great way to boost their general health and for a wealth of other reasons. Edibles are easy to take, easy to carry around and ideal for knowing the exact dosage that you are taking.
With the rise of CBD and other cannabis-derived products we are seeing ever-imaginative CBD edibles becoming available to us, from the age old traditional CBD gummies to CBD chocolate, and more recently, coffees with a shot of CBD or even restaurants which are now serving CBD infused food.
Just because there are so many edibles options available now, however, doesn’t mean that you should miss out on creating your own. In fact, making your own CBD edibles has never been more popular and has never been easier.
Making your own CBD edibles
It is not only fun and easy to make your own edibles. There are some other reasons to give it a go…
- You can include the right dose for you. Bought edibles will be able to tell you how much CBD is in your product. That might mean that you might need to chop up or multiply the product so that you get the right dose. If you make your own edibles you can add precisely the right amount of CBD that you need.
- You know exactly what’s in it. Maybe you’re vegetarian or vegan, diabetic, have an allergy to certain foods, or are just very conscious about what is in the food that you are eating. If you make your own edibles, you can ensure that there are only the ingredients that you want to be in them, present.
- You can adjust recipes. It might be that you find a lot of cakes too sweet or find that some flavours are too strong, for example. By making your own edibles, you can make them exactly how you like them.
- It tastes better than CBD oil. It is safe to say that the taste of CBD is at best, erm, an acquired taste. As with a lot of things which are ‘good for you’, it’s flavour doesn’t quite stand up to the goodness that it provides. So, by disguising its taste through edibles, you won’t have to endure the taste of CBD oil any longer.
A great way to incorporate CBD into your cooking and edibles is by making cannabutter – or CBD-infused butter. Once that you have made your cannabutter, you can use it as you would any other butter. AS long as you use strong flavours with it, you won’t get the taste of CBD, and it is as simple to use as any other butter.
If you are using CBD oil drops, there often is no need to go to the effort of making CBD infused butter. If you are using butter to cook to bake with, just add the right dosage into the food when it is at its most liquid stage and stir it in well. This should evenly distribute your CBD. Make sure you don’t cook directly in CBD oil, however, this will heat it up too high, taste disgusting and not be effective!
It is important to remember that you need to calculate your dosage according to how much you want to have in the WHOLE BATCH, so will usually involve multiplying your dose.
It is also important to note that CBD can start to evaporate at 160°C, so if you are cooking with it, you need to make sure that you don’t heat the food (or drink) above 160°C.
How to make Cannabutter
If you don’t have CBD oil and have the actual plant buds, you will need to take it through a process called decarboxylation before it can be made into CBD infused butter. The reason why you can’t just eat the raw hemp plant to get your CBD fix is because the CBD needs to be activated first. The best way to activate the CBD is through heating it up, and this is called decarboxylation.
To decarboxylate your hemp:
- Preheat your oven to about 120°C
- Take your buds, break them apart and spread them evenly on a piece of baking paper on a baking tray (to stop them from sticking)
- Bake for 30-40 minutes
- Shake the tray roughly every 10 minutes to get an even bake
- Take the buds out and leave to cool
To then make cannabutter, make sure that you are using the best quality butter that is available.
Make a note of the strength of your hemp. If you infuse all of this with a block of butter, this is the total amount of CBD that you will get from the entire block of butter.
To make CBD infused butter:
- Grind up your decarboxylated buds coarsely. The smaller that you grind them, the stronger the flavour of ‘plant’ will be in the butter, so it is worth trying to find a happy medium between a good distribution and a good taste.
- Slowly melt the butter over a low heat – add about the same amount of water (volume-wise) to stop the butter from scorching.
- Add your ground hemp and gently mix in.
- Leave to simmer for 2 to 3 hours at between 70°C and 90°C.
- Strain the CBD infused melted butter through a cheesecloth to take out the plant material.
- Put it into a container and leave to cool until it has the consistency of butter.
If you want to make CBD infused butter from CBD oil, just add your dosage of drops to the melted butter and mix in well.
To work out your dose of CBD per serving of butter, just calculate the total amount of CBD that you used for the whole block of butter, then divide it by the number of servings.
Butter alternatives
Some people prefer not to eat dairy products or like to use alternatives to butter. Coconut oil is one example of something that people like to substitute for butter.
To make CBD infused coconut oil (cannacoco oil?) you can use the same method as above, substituting the butter for coconut oil. Due to the fact that coconut oil has a high content of saturated fat, this is an excellent way to take CBD as it is very good at getting it effectively absorbed into the body.
You can also infuse your CBD into oils such as canola oil or olive oil. These can be left to infuse for 15-30 minutes as a quick and easy alternative to butter.
It is important to remember that dosing can be different for everyone, and different plants, temperatures and processes can change the strength of CBD. This is why, especially with edibles, you start off with low doses and gradually increase them.
There are many reasons why you might want to try CBD and by using it in cooking – either as a butter or a butter alternative, it can be a fun and interesting method. If you are trying CBD for the first time, make sure that you speak to your doctor first – especially if you are taking other medication.
CBD is natural, non-addictive, and no-one has ever fatally over-dosed on it, meaning that it is safe to use.
So, if you are thinking about trying CBD or if you already take CBD in another form, why not give cooking with it a go?
