We were sitting around wondering what the ‘best’ pot brownie recipes looked like and so we’ve compiled three pot brownie recipes from the web. In our table we give credit as due, along with the source and we are happy to provide this easy pot brownie reference!
The “pot brownie” needs less introduction than most baked goods, but you’ll find no sloppily constructed, slightly burnt bars here.
Home Grown, Home Baked
For those who don’t live near a dispensary (or a group of friendly college kids), here’s a low-key way to get your hands on safe, tasty edibles: Go homemade
Not only will they taste better, but when you DIY, you’re also fully in charge of how much bud actually ends up in the brownies. This recipe calls for a full 1/8 ounce (3.5 grams) of cannabis, yet the process still works if you decide to use less.
An easy way to measure this is to use about 3 tablespoons of finely ground cannabis (more on this below).
Decarboxylated Cannabis
Pro Tip: To draw out cannabis’s full potential in edibles, it must be decarboxylated.
Decarboxylation is basically a fancy way of saying that the herb needs to be heated to fully activate it to its psychoactive form. As in: A joint won’t get anyone high unless it’s lit on fire.
This recipe makes 16 potent brownies. While they are delicious, we do not recommend you eat more than one at a time. If you’re new to all this, eat a small one. And be patient. It could take up to 90 minutes for the brownie to digest and the high to hit you. When eaten, cannabis is absorbed by our livers, so the ‘high’ is different than if you smoke or vape; also, since it has to be digested before it can be absorbed it can take a long time before you feel it.
Smoke, Eat, Vape
Marijuana can be responsibly enjoyed in many forms, from vaporizing to smoking to topical lotions. But for many, the easiest method of dosing legal or medical marijuana is simply eating it—and if done right, it can be delicious. Edibles offer a wide range of options, allow users to experience the effects of THC slowly, and they don’t require you to know how to smoke.
When it comes to marijuana edibles, there are some things you need to know before you get started. For starters, it’s important to remember that your body metabolizes THC differently than when you consume it by smoking or vaporizing it. Dosage may be smaller with an edible than with a traditional smoking method. The length of time it will take for an edible to metabolize in your system will depend upon how much you have eaten that day and your metabolism.
Choose Your Strain
Because of this, it’s wise to start slowly when consuming pot brownies or any other form of marijuana edible. It’s always easy to eat more, but you’ll have to wait it out if you take too strong of a dose. When making your butter, the strain of marijuana you pick will impact the effect that your brownies will have. A Sativa strain will give you a more exciting creative and energetic feeling, while an Indica strain will make you more relaxed. Both strains can severely ruin your day if you eat too much of them.
How Much Weed in Brownies?
The better question is how much weed should you use in making weed butter because that’s the real difference maker (and we’ll get to that shortly).
You wouldn’t be making pot brownies or cookies if you didn’t want to get high, but that doesn’t mean you want to get wrecked. If you want your butter to last longer or keep yourself from accidentally taking too much, use less butter. If your recipe calls for a 1/2 cup of butter, use 1/4 cup of your pot butter and 1/4 cup of standard butter.
This method is useful if you have friends who are snacky, might not think about dosage, or if you simply want to be able to enjoy a whole brownie without worrying about the dose. Just because a high is stronger doesn’t mean it’s better.
Butter Versus Oil
Call us old-fashioned, but we recommend using weed butter as opposed to different oils. There are too many variables at work with the oils, making it difficult to know what to expect when you’re finished.
Weed butter is easy to infuse in a crockpot or standard stovetop pan, but it takes time, effort, and the willingness for your home to smell like weed for a few hours.
Is There Weed In This?
It’s an easy bet a good portion of 14-64 year old humans ask “Is there weed in here?” when handed a homemade brownie. So ubiquitous are THC-laded chocolatey treats that this buddy comedy fuel is often people’s first foray into edible cannabis. (Likely attributable to chocolate’s powers of covering up nearly any unpleasant taste.) Too-strong brownies sometimes carry the deep bitterness of raw marijuana, but with the right proportions you can make a brownie that’s as delicious as it is dastardly.
Some bakers opt for chocolate ganache while others are in love with the cocoa (powder). Both will give you moist and gooey brownies on their own, but combining the two makes them addictively fudgey and, pot or not, they stand alone. Brownies bake up like an extra-dense cake, and both the pan and the baking time dictate the degree of fudge you end up with. A big wide pan will give you a thick chewy result, whereas smaller portioned pans will bake up super fast and gain height.
Prepare Cannabis Infused Butter
The best method for smaller batches of infusions is to simply seal up one stick of butter with an eighth of mid-to-high grade finely ground and decarboxylated bud, and heat at 170℉ or 160℉ for an hour or two. Shorter cook times give you more of the early cannabinoids like CBD and THC, as well as preserve the terpenes that give each strain its unique smell and taste. Longer cook times provide sleepier butter that has more CBN, known for couch lock, not to be ignored if you suffer from insomnia.
Here’s Our Best Pot Brownie Recipes
| Recipe #1 | Rebecca Firkser | Greatist.com | Makes 16 Servings |
|---|---|---|---|
| QUANTITY | INGREDIENT | NOTES | DIRECTONS |
| 4 Ounces | Unsweetened, Quality Chocolate | Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C) and grease a 9-by-13 inch glass baking pan with cooking spray. | |
| 3/4 Cup | CannaButter | See Recipe | Place chocolate in a large glass mixing bowl and melt in the microwave or over a saucepan of boiling water. |
| 1 and 3/4 Cups | Coconut Sugar | Add cannabutter to melted chocolate and mix until combined, then mix in coconut sugar, salt, and vanilla. | |
| 1/2 Teaspoon | Kosher Salt | Add eggs one at a time, mixing until fully incorporated. | |
| 2 Teaspoons | Vanilla Extract | Mix in flour, and walnut and/or mint, if using. | |
| 3 | Large Eggs | Pour batter into prepared baking pan and bake for 25–30 minutes. Let cool slightly, then cut into 16 pieces. Store leftovers — clearly marked if there are others using your kitchen — in the refrigerator for up to a week, or in the freezer for several months. | |
| 1 and 3/4 Cups | All Purpose Flour | ||
| 2/3 Cup | Chopped Walnuts | Optional | |
| CannaButter | |||
| 1/8 Ounce | Finely Ground Cannabis Trim | If you know a grower or you are a grower just use the 'left over' bio-mass from the trimming operation | Preheat oven to 240°F (115°C). Spread cannabis evenly on a baking sheet. Bake 50 minutes (if using less cannabis, check oven after 35–40 minutes). Remove from oven and set aside. |
| 3/4 Cup or 1 1/2 Sticks | Unsalted Butter | In a medium saucepan, melt butter over low heat. Add decarboxylated (oven-baked) cannabis and lower heat to a simmer. Cook for 45 minutes, then remove from heat. | |
| Recipe #2 | John-Michael Bond | DailyDot.com | Makes 16 Servings |
| 1/2 Cup | Cannabis Butter | If you want to make it weaker, use 1/4 cup of cannabis butter and 1/4 cup of unsalted butter | Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. |
| 1 Cup | White Sugar | Grease a pan with cooking spray or by lightly coating a paper towel with cooking oil and rubbing it down. You want your pan to be around 8×8 or 9×9 inches, but if you don’t mind thinner brownies, a larger pan can work. Just make sure you check the brownies after 15 minutes instead of 25 or 30. | |
| 1/3 Cup | Unsweetened Cocoa Powder | Mix your cocoa powder, flour, salt, and baking powder together in a mixing bowl and set it aside. | |
| 1/2 Cup | All Purpose Flour | Melt your butter down in a saucepan until it is a liquid, being careful not to let it reach a boil. You want your butter melted but not hot. Mix sugar and vanilla into the butter. |
|
| 1/4 Teaspoon | Salt | Add your sugar, butter, and vanilla to the mixing bowl with your other dry ingredients, along with your eggs. Beat the mixture in your mixing bowl until your mixture is velvety. Pour the brownie batter into your baking pan. |
|
| 1/4 Teasppon | Baking Powder | Put your brownies in the oven, and let bake for 25 to 30 minutes. | |
| 1 Teaspoon | Vanilla Extract | Let them cool completely before eating and remember, it takes about 90 minutes for cannabis to be absorbed into your bloodstream | |
| 2 | Eggs | ||
| Recipe #3 | Danielle Guercio | skillet.lifehacker.com | Makes 16 Servings |
| 1 Stick | Cannabis Butter | See recipe above | Preheat to 350℉. If you’ve prepped your butter in a sous-vide bag, toss it into a bowl with warm water and let it soften fully before mixing the batter. Baking all brownies, even cannabis brownies, calls for your standard wet bowl, dry bowl batter technique, so start by mixing all of the dry ingredients together. Then, in a second bowl, combine vanilla and eggs. |
| 1/4 Cup | Vegetable Shortening | Melt the chocolate gently with either a double boiler or in a microwave in short bursts. Stir in the shortening into the chocolate until it melts. Stream the chocolate mixture slowly into the eggs and mix with a spatula, then fold in cannabutter. Make sure everything is uniformly mixed without aerating too much. | |
| 1/3 Cup | Cocoa Powder | Fold the wet batter into the combined dry ingredients, and stir this sinfully thick goop again until it’s just mixed. Here’s where my bff OXO bowl scrapers come in handy: they allow you to squeeze out every last drop of the fudge into a waiting greased and parchment lined 9x7 pan. Smooth out the mixture and smack it flat on the counter a few times to make sure there is no air trapped inside. | |
| 1 Cup | Cake Flour | Bake for 15 minutes, rotate the pan, then bake for another 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool in the pan for at least 10 minutes. At this point your brownies are warm and edible, but be warned that their structure will come from cooling completely, similar to chocolate chip cookies. If you can’t wait for them to cool completely, at least use a big, sharp knife to cut off a slab so you don’t damage the innards too much. Use the paper to take them out of the pan and cool the rest of the way on a wire rack. | |
| 2 Cups | Sugar | Portion, or don’t, but keep in mind that each 1-inch square will have roughly 29 milligrams of THC, a potent dose, so serve small chunks. You can also swap out half of the butter for the non-psychoactive kind and drop the dosage down to 15 milligrams, which is much more reasonable for people who don’t smoke habitually. Follow the basic edible protocol not laid out by Maureen Dowd and try not to consume more than 5 milligrams at time if you are a new denizen of weedland. Always wait 60 minutes before eating more, because eating too much can leave you impaired for hours at a time. | |
| 1/2 Teaspoon | Salt | These devilishly rich bites will be too tasty to resist, so no one will judge you for making them sans herb, but if you want to impress someone or just imbibe the nostalgic way, this is it. | |
| 4 Ounces | Bittersweet or Semisweet Chocolate | ||
| 1/4 Teaspoons | Baking Powder | ||
| 1/8 Teaspoon | Baking Soda | ||
| 2 | Jumbo Eggs | ||
| 1 | Vanilla Bean - crushed |
Want to learn more? Read this post on Edible Marijuana
Still Curious? Book a Wine-and-Weed Tour with Happy Travelers Tours! Or, sit down and enjoy CBD-infused Tea and Treats with our High Tea Experience!