[Merrytricks]

Thanks to a friend's inspiration and instruction, I had great success with my first attempt at cannabis confection. If butter is too much for your digestive tract, coconut oil may be an answer. With apologies for rough webcam photos, here's what I did.

I started water boiling for a bain marie, while grinding up, hmm, well, all amounts approximate: about 3.5 grams shake and about 9.5 grams post-vape buds, mixed strains, both sativas and indicas but all high-CBD.
In the jar on the far right is about 250 ml of solid coconut oil, a little firmer than butter in consistency.


The solid coconut oil melts down to a clear liquid in the bain marie.


Add weed, and simmer over steadily boiling water for about 3.5 hours, stirring and mashing frequently. I mashed with a spoon; you could use a potato ricer if you've got one.


Pour the cannabis coconut oil through a colander to remove solids.


Squeeze solids well to extract as much coconut oil as possible. My spoon wasn't doing much good, so I hand-squeezed it. Good thing I'm ambidextrous and my laptop is lightweight.


Hands all covered with cannabis coconut oil? Makes a great topical medicinal body lotion. Good thing I can also take photos with my toe.


There's still sediment in that oil...


...so through a tea strainer it goes.


To expel any water, chill the oil. After less than an hour in the fridge, it's a solid again, which will float above any liquid you want to get rid of. Mine had very little liquid.


You can store this coconut cannabis oil for quite a long time and use it in anything from hot cocoa to curries, or just add a spoonful to milk and drink it, but I proceeded to make it all into chocolates.

I re-melted the oil over low heat, and melted in two squares of semi-sweet baking chocolate. That's - hang on - a little over 50 grams.


Meanwhile, I sifted together roughly, very roughly, I was actually working with pinches and handfuls but maybe 100 grams each (a good handful or two) of dry cocoa powder and powdered confectioner's sugar.


Stir the liquid gradually into the dry ingredients. I could have made the chocolates without any dry ingredients, but I figured the dry would help keep them firm, and increase their chocolatiness with a lesser increase in volume than if I'd used all baker's or bar chocolate.


Chill the mixture until it's solid enough to be easy to work with. By now I've been licking the spoon and my fingers pretty often and there's a nice sunny glow to the proceedings.

I used a melon baller to scoop up balls about the size of the hazelnuts shown for comparison, and rolled each chocolate ball in confectioner's sugar, or dry cocoa, or coconut shavings.


Here's a closer view of balls vs nuts. Now you can see the difference.


And here is the final yield: 45 chocolates; 15 each of cocoa, sugar and coconut coated chocolates.


Potency? I'm a poor judge. I'm a legendary lightweight. Also take into consideration though, that the bud was vaped at fairly low temperatures, so there was a lot left for the oil to absorb. I can spend a very pleasant, pain-free couple of hours as I nibble slowly on just one of these little chocolates.

Caution: these are luscious, decadent, succulent and hedonistic sweets and remember, you are what you eat. You really might prefer to share these with a good friend.



Edited because confectionist is a perfectionist who found two typos.

This post has been edited by Merrytricks: 19 February 2012 - 02:59 AM

[wildbill]

Thanks for posting this, I have been thinking about making something similar for a while.

If you use 50% coconut oil & 50% chocolate (and usually a little mint flavouring) it makes ice chocolate, popular in Sweden & Germany at xmas. They set it in cupcake moulds/papers.

Just one question, do you really need to simmer the mix for 3.5 hrs?

Bill

[Merrytricks]

Good question, b.wild. I have no idea how long it's necessary to simmer the oil.

I wonder, have any chemists out there cooked up a batch of butter or oil and tested a sample every so often, to see when it reaches peak potency? The amount of heat and cooking time I used were just guesses.

It certainly looked a much deeper green after 3.5 hours than it did after half that time.

Drat, now I'm wondering, was it really three and a half hours, or two and a half? Where are those notes, Igor?

[Merrytricks]

Yep, it was about 3 to 3.5 hours of simmering, and the entire project took about 6 hours, including simmering time and clean-up time and all. I may have simmered it longer than I needed to, but the results are very nice.

[Lake Palmer]

Slightly off topic but raw, pure coconut oil appears to have loads of health benefits in the form of various acids it contains. I use it in my morning smoothies and it works a treat. You can also use it for oil pulling (Just Google) and the oil pulling works!! My gum disease has all but disappeared.

[trex]

My mouth is salivating

[L'Emmerdeur]

 Lake Palmer, on 19 February 2012 - 07:18 AM, said:

My gum disease has all but disappeared.

Do you rinse with salt water and clean your teeth every time you've swilled on oil?

If so I'd guess that the extra brushing/saline solution has probably had more of an effect than sucking on oil for 20 minutes.

Whatever makes you happy though dude, just doesn't sound like my kind of thing.

[Merrytricks]

Ah, oil, and then saline solution. But I was hoping to learn that curative powers over gum disease had been found in the salubrious combination of coconut, cannabis and chocolate.