Hemp Edibles: Your Quick and Fun Guide To Baking With CBD

Three macaroons stacked on each other. Text reads "Hemp Edibles: Baking with CBD."

If you find yourself spending more time at home these days, baking hemp edibles infused with CBD could be a great way to reap the benefits of both stress-baking and CBD. Though CBD is not widely FDA-approved, there is anecdotal evidence that suggests CBD can help with a host of issues including,

These, along with the psychological benefits of creating in the kitchen, are the perfect combination for calm during quarantine.

Hemp Edibles: Why Use CBD Flower?

Although it is possible to use one of Sunset Lake’s CBD oil tinctures, this post will explain how to make hemp edibles using raw CBD hemp flower. Baking with CBD hemp flower is a bit more time-consuming, but offers a more affordable route and is a more interactive and rewarding experience.

Our quick guide to hemp edibles will take you through four steps:

1. Dosing Your Hemp Edibles

2. Decarbing Your Raw Hemp Flower

3. Infusing Your Fat or Oil with CBD

4. Baking with CBD

Step 1: Dosing Your Hemp Edibles

There are several online tools that can help you dose your hemp edibles correctly because you definitely don’t want to wing it. One of our favorites from the folks over at Nuggmd.com is this free-to-use edible dosage calculator.

You’ll need a few things to use this calculator, like:

A kitchen scale
The certificate of analysis that corresponds with your hemp flower
A conversion calculator

Luckily, Sunset Lake CBD’s hemp flower is potent, meaning that we only need a small amount to make a baking oil that has a high CBD concentration.

For the remainder of this piece, let’s refer to Sunset Lake’s 2023 Lifter strain. You can find Lifter hemp flower here, and its certificate of analysis here. Each certificate of analysis lists a cannabinoid summary, which, for our Lifter hemp flower, looks like this:

Our free-to-use calculator does have some limitations we’ll talk about in just a second, but below are Lifter’s potency numbers that we’ll want to plug into our calculator.

Total THC – 0.65%
Total CBD – 17.8%

Unfortunately, our CBD edible dosage calculator is limited by its ability to calculate whole integers. For the sake of calculating dosages, round up to the nearest whole number. Trust us, you’d rather have weaker edibles and eat more than be surprised by stronger edibles because after you eat one, there is no going back.

We have to make a few assumptions about how much cooking fat (coconut oil, MCT oil, etc.) and grams of hemp flower we’re infusing.

Dosing Our Hemp Edibles

Let’s assume that we’re infusing two cups of butter equal to four sticks. Let’s also assume that we’re using a full ounce (28 grams) of Lifter hemp flower.

Using our potency numbers above, and assuming a perfect infusion we find that two cups of infused butter will contain:

182 mg of THC
4984 mg of CBD
5.69 mg of THC per tablespoon
155.75 mg of CBD per tablespoon

Those numbers are pretty eye-popping, so we’ll want to make sure that we pick the right recipe. Luckily at the bottom of our hemp edibles calculator, there is a place to enter the number of tablespoons of butter your recipe calls for and the number of servings your recipe will make.

This is where our conversion calculator comes in handy. Let’s assume we’re using half a cup (24 teaspoons) of our infused butter to make cookies. In order to hit our sweet spot of around 25 mg of CBD, we’ll need to make 50 cookies— they’ll be pretty small. Alternatively, we can cut our infused butter with non-infused butter in order to cut the potency.

Dosing Your Hemp Edibles

Dosing your hemp edibles will look a lot like the work we just did in the previous section but without all of the assumptions. To dial in your preferred dosage, feel free to adjust the amount of flower that you use using your kitchen scale, the amount of butter/oil/fat, and your recipe.

Increasing The Potency of Your Hemp Edibles

In the example above we used CBD hemp flower for our infusion. You can also use decarboxylate and infuse CBD kief into your cooking fat. Not only will Kief compliment your flower, but it will also give your edibles an extra kick.

Step 2: “Decarb” Your Hemp For Infusion

To decarb your hemp flower for infusion, you’ll need a few things:

Raw hemp flower
Cookie baking sheet or roasting pan
Aluminum foil
An oven preheated to 230 degrees F
Ventilation

First, cover your baking sheet or roasting pan with parchment paper. This will help make cleanup easier later and protect your kitchenware in the long run.

Lay your hemp flower on the cookie sheet. Break up the larger buds in order to create more surface area. If you are using kief, sprinkle it on top of the buds, not directly on the parchment paper. If you’re using a roasting pan as opposed to a cookie sheet, you can also cover the pan with aluminum foil to keep the hemp smell to a minimum.

Place the cookie sheet in your preheated oven for 45-60 minutes. Your flower should have a brown color and be brittle to the touch when it’s done decarbing. There are many different opinions on what works best for decarbing— some recommend leaving the hemp in the oven for 90 minutes to two hours at varying temperatures. Feel free to experiment, but make sure the temperature is never higher than 300F so as not to damage the CBD.

Be aware that decarbing hemp flower is an aromatic process. Make sure your cohabitants are cool with having the entire house smell of cannabis before you place any hemp in the oven.

Can You Decarb Kief?

You can decarb kief just as you would hemp flower. If you plan on decarbing kief by itself, we would recommend pouring your kief into a small glass bowl instead of laying it out on a baking sheet. Kief can be very sticky. Keeping it together will make it more manageable.

Be aware that hemp edibles made purely with CBD kief will have a very sharp taste and are quite potent.

Step 3: Infuse Your Fat or Oil for Hemp Edibles

You can use any type of oil that you prefer, whether it’s coconut oil, butter, Crisco, olive oil, etc. Mix in your decarbed hemp and heat your oil at low heat (about 200 degrees F) on the stove or in a crockpot for four hours. Make sure to stir occasionally. Some people recommend heating your fat or oil for only an hour, others say to leave it for up to eight hours. Again, you can experiment with what you think works best for you and your schedule.

When your decarboxylated flower is done steeping in your oil or fat, strain out the flower. A regular metal sieve is sufficient. If you used kief or finely ground hemp, you may need a cheesecloth or nut milk bag to catch any particulates.

When your infused oil cools, store whatever you are not going to use immediately in an airtight container and place it in either the refrigerator or the freezer.

Infusing Decarbed Flower in a Mason Jar

You can also infuse your cooking fat in a sealed Mason or Bell jar. This is a good option for folks who only want to infuse a small amount at a time or are worried about the smell during infusion.

Add your cooking fat and decarbed hemp flower to a jar. Screw on your top, but not too tightly, and place the jar in a pot of water over a low burner. Slowly, your fat should melt (if it started as solid,) and over the course of a few hours should take on a dark green appearance.

As you would with any infusion when you’re oil or fat is finished steeping, you’ll want to strain all of the flower out with a sieve.

Step 4: Time to Bake Your Hemp Edibles!

Now that you have your infused oil, it’s time to get cooking! The only important recommendation here is that you bake or cook your hemp edibles at a temperature no higher than 350F in order to prevent the CBD from boiling off. Otherwise, get creative! Cook from scratch or use a boxed mix from the store!

When you’re ready to eat your hemp edibles, remember: Start low, go slow! Even though we calculated the dosage, there is no way to know the exact dosage of CBD and THC in our hemp edibles without submitting our infused oil for laboratory testing.

Everyone responds differently to CBD and THC, so make sure to eat only a small amount in order to see how your edibles affect you. If you’re a novice to hemp edibles, treat your final product as if it was a THC edible. Do not eat your hemp edibles before operating a vehicle, working, or engaging in any activity that requires full sobriety.

Frequently Asked Hemp Edible Questions

How Long Does It Take For Hemp Edibles to Kick In?

Because it takes time for the body to process hemp edibles, it can take up to two hours before feeling any effects. If you think you might be tempted to eat more during that time, consider baking a CBD-free batch of goodies to nibble on in unrestricted amounts while you are waiting for your hemp edibles to kick in.

Once you know how your body reacts to your hemp edibles, you can use them accordingly. After practice and experience, a homemade CBD cookie might become your preferred tasty alternative to tincture or a CBD preroll, whether during the day or when it is time to wind down.

How Long Does CBD Stay In Your System?

Edible CBD will only last a few hours, but the trace amounts of THC present in your hemp edible may linger in your body for a few weeks. It may even cause you to test positive in a traditional workplace urine test.

Are There Any Side Effects?

Hemp edibles don’t have any exclusive side effects. However, consuming too much CBD can cause you to have an adverse reaction like,

Dry Mouth
Diarrhea
Fatigue

To avoid having an adverse reaction to your hemp edibles, dose them appropriately, and don’t eat more than one at a time.