3 Ingredient Cannabis Infused Chocolate From Scratch

Chocolate is comfort, but guessing your edible dose is stress. We’re not doing stress today. I’m Margaret, a Certified Ganjier and TCI Certified Cannabis Educator, and I’m walking you through the easiest 3 ingredient homemade cannabis infused chocolate from scratch. It tastes like real chocolate and lets you calculate your dose down to the milligram. We start with the ingredient that makes all of this work: cacao butter, the vegan fat extracted from cacao beans. It smells incredible, melts into a golden liquid, and pairs perfectly with cannabis because cannabinoids are fat soluble. 

If you’ve been wanting an edibles recipe that feels empowering instead of uncertain, hit play, make a batch, and take control of your high life. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves chocolate, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Transcript

Why Homemade Chocolate Feels Good

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome back, friends. This week we are talking about homemade chocolate. I'm your host, Margaret, a certified gangier and TCI certified cannabis educator, and I believe your kitchen is the best dispensary that you'll ever have. Welcome to Bite Me, the show about edibles. Let's grab a snack and dive in, shall we? All right. I am really glad that you're here. And if you're joining me for the very first time, welcome. What better episode to land on than an episode of how you too can make homemade chocolate? And if you didn't have the opportunity yet to listen to the episode that I did with Chef Julian, the director of research at INSA, he is a master chocolatier and a master pastry maker. And of course, the topic of crafting beautiful gourmet edibles, for instance, was the conversation. But even before I interviewed him, I had made these chocolates and I knew I would have to share this recipe with you all because sometimes when it feels like the world is a dumpster fire, having something like a beautiful homemade infused chocolate is just the thing to soothe the soul. Am I right? Has anybody else been feeling existential dread lately, or is it just me? I want to start by telling you what it feels like to pull a jar of homemade infused chocolate out of the fridge. I made this batch not that long ago. I stood at the fridge and I took one out of the jar and I held it for a second. I knew exactly what was in it. I know the cacao powder that I used, the maple syrup, just exactly how much infused cacao butter went into each piece. I didn't guess. There was no fucking around and finding out. Just the chocolate that I made. I popped it into my mouth and I just let it sit there and dissolve, and it's so good. And here's the thing that a lot of people don't realize is that cacao butter is a fat. Cannabis is fat soluble. That's the whole reason that it works so well. They pair together so beautifully. So we're gonna get into the how and why, but I want you to hold on to that idea because it comes up again when we're gonna talk about dosing. But by the end of this episode, you're going to know what cacao butter actually is, why it's different from any other fat that you've used for infusions, how to infuse it, and how to turn it into real chocolate with only three ingredients. Well, actually technically four, and how to figure out how much you're eating in each piece. Does that sound like a good way to spend the next 15-20 minutes? Great. Buckle up, friends. What is cacao butter? So let's start right from the very beginning because this is the ingredient that makes this whole thing possible. So cacao butter is the edible fat that's been extracted from cacao beans. That's it. So despite the name, there's actually no dairy in it, which makes it completely vegan. So the word butter is kind of a misnomer. It's just describing the texture, not the source. I wouldn't even say that butter is a great word, like a good descriptor either, because it's it's harder than, I mean, maybe butter that's been in the fridge and not in the butter dish. It is usually sold in a block and it's kind of a pale and waxy looking, but it smells amazing. You'll know it by the smell because it's like white chocolate and cocoa all at once. And when you melt it, it becomes a beautiful golden liquid. This is the reason homemade chocolate tastes like chocolate instead of coconut oil cacao powder stirred into it. Now you're going to see two words used a lot in chocolate making cacao and cocoa. They actually come from the same plant, and the difference is the processing. So cacao is the minimally processed version, cold pressed, lower temperatures, more bitter, higher antioxidants. Cocoa has been roasted at higher temps, is a little sweeter, and it's a little less nutritionally dense. And for this recipe, you can use either. It comes down to taste preference. I use cacao powder, and I love the result. And if you want to go the raw root with cacao, that works as well, cacao powder. I know that it gets really confusing in a way because the spelling of these two words is also like ridiculously close. So, where do you find cacao butter? You can find it at health food stores, bulk stores, Amazon, pretty much anywhere where they sell ingredients. I have to give you fair warning though, it can be expensive. A block can run you anywhere from$15 to$30, depending on where you buy it, what brand you go with, where you live. And I want to be honest with you about that because I don't love recommending ingredients that blindside people at the checkout. But that said, a little bit goes a long way. And the end product is so far above anything that you would buy that it's absolutely worth it. Of course, we're always talking about how our kitchens are the best dispensary that we'll ever have. And sometimes that means investing in the right ingredients. Now, I will also give a fair warning that the cacao butter that I'm work that I worked with for this recipe was gifted to me. So I didn't actually have to go out and buy it. Now, I had at one point because I did previously to that use up the last of my cacao butter that I had on hand for something else that I was making with it. But my daughter had a big jar that she wasn't using, so she gifted it to me. And of course, she became the recipient of many of my infused chocolates. So I would say that was a pretty fair trait. One other thing before we move on, that I will note that vanilla extract is that you shouldn't add it. Most extracts have water in them, and water and melted chocolate don't really get along very well. And the second water hits your chocolate mixture, it's going to seize and it goes from a liquid to a gluey, grainy mess, and there's no coming back from that. So if you want to add flavor, use fruit grade oils, mint, orange, coffee, cinnamon, all of these work beautifully. And I'll come back to that in the tip section because I want to plant that flag right now so nobody ruins a recipe mid-batch. This is the part that turns a food recipe into a bite-me episode. The infusion happens before the chocolate does. You infuse the cacao first, you strain it, and then it slots right into the recipe where the plain cacao butter would go. It's easy, and you know I love easy on this show. So once you've done the infusion, making the chocolate feels like the easy reward at the end. Now I have made cacao butter, infused it more than once. For this particular recipe, when I was making the chocolate, I had already made something with infused cacao butter, and I was using the pre-dosed pieces of cacao butter in this recipe. So I wasn't actually having to infuse first, if that makes sense. I also infused the batch that I did most recently with a FICO, a full extract cannabis oil. And that also means that you don't have to strain product out after you're done infusing the two together. So that is one advantage of doing that. But I have also infused cacao butter with plant material, with flour. And I've done it actually, I think I always did it on the stove because if I recall, the Levo, because I have a Levo device and it recommended not doing the cacao butter in the Levo because of the dispensing system. I think it was a bit too thick. Having said that, could you do it in an ardent device or magical butter machine? You probably could, but honestly, doing it in a double broiler or the mason jar stove method, super easy to do. So I would just go that direction. Now, if you're using flour, of course, you know, or or some lot of concentrates, you would have to decarb first always. That doesn't change, except if you're using a FECO, then you don't have to decarb first. But nothing changes there, regardless of whatever fat that you're infusing. That's stay that is the same no matter what. And once that's done, you can set up your double broiler or your heat-safe bowl over a pot of simmering water, or you can do the mason jar in the pot of simmering water. So that's when you put the plant material and the fat into the either the top of the double broiler or in your glass mason jar. And I melted it until it was fully liquid and you keep it low and slow. I'm doing 20 minutes now, or sorry, 30 minutes now because I had Vanessa Laverado on the show a while ago and she showed us that 30 minutes is the amount of time that you need to extract most of the cannabinoids from your plant material. By all means, if you want to extract for longer, go ahead. But 30 minutes will extract most of the cannabinoids out of your plant material. So this doesn't have to be a big thing. But you do want to be consistent, gentle heat all the way, give it a little stir every so often so you can stir what's on the double broiler, or I just put on an oven mitt and pick up the glass because it might be warm in the jar and give it a swirl. Strain it through a fine mesh strainer into a clean container. Now, if you are going to be immediately moving to your homemade chocolate, then you don't necessarily have to let it cool because you want it to be warm anyway. It's a great idea to then put it into molds, and then you can calculate how much each piece of that cacao butter is. It's honestly one of the most satisfying things that I've made in my kitchen in a while, and I've been making edibles for a long time. And one thing I will mention too, that regardless of what method you use to infuse your cacao butter, it does have a pretty strong dominant smell and flavor all on its own. And that works in your favor because it will mask a lot of the cannabis flavor. So cacao butter is pulling double duty as an infusion base and flavor carrier, and that's a really nice thing to know going into it and why you might want to try it out for yourself. Making the actual chocolate. Once you have your infused cacao butter, the chocolate comes together in like five minutes of active work. You heard that right, folks. Five minutes. I mean, who doesn't want homemade chocolate in like five minutes? And it's three ingredients. This is three ingredients. Now, I did say earlier, maybe four because you can customize it. And again, I love something that you can customize because you can tailor it for your mood. For your base three, you need your fused cacao butter, your cocoa powder, and a sweetener. I used maple syrup. And the recipe I adapted this from uses equal part cacao butter and cacao powder by volume. So one cup each, and then a quarter to a half cup of sweetener, depending on how sweet you want it. And I went with a quarter cup of maple syrup because I wanted something closer to a dark chocolate and it worked out really well. As someone with a sweet tooth, the quarter cup was just fine. I still found it sweet enough. Half a cup would probably make it quite sweet. So just bear that in mind. But you may want to experiment on your own because I will tell you that once you try this once, you'll probably make this again. I know I will be, and it can be fun to experiment with different ratios. So you melt the cacao butter, you then you whisk in your cacao powder, and then you add your maple syrup, and you whisk until everything is completely smooth and there's no lumps, and then you pour it into your molds. That's it. I'm not oversimplifying it. It's really that easy, that approachable. And after I poured it into the molds, after it was off the heat, I took a really nice flaky sea salt and I did little pinches on each of the on each of the molds just to give it that nice touch of saltiness, which is such a lovely classic combination. And I put it in the fridge to set for at least 30 minutes. A few things that you should note about the texture is that this chocolate will not have the same snap as like a store-bought bar. And that's because store chocolate has been tempered, which is a specific heating and cooling process that stabilizes like a cow butter crystals and gives you that clean break. And we're not getting into any of this tempering that's more in the realm of these master chocolatiers who probably have more time, equipment, know-how, skill, patience. Obviously, that can make beautiful chocolate. What you do get instead is a softer, I don't want to say more fudgy bite because it's still pretty firm. And now maybe that's because I do keep it in my fridge. And so that does firm it up a little bit, but it's completely delicious. I challenge you to find fault with this chocolate. So if you want it a little firmer, I'd say store it in the fridge. It's better that way. On the sweetener, maple syrup gives you consistent results and a subtle almost caramel note that works really well with the dark chocolate. Honey also works well, is probably the most reliable from a texture standpoint because if it's low water content, the recipe as it's written, which will stir up honey agave liquid sugars. So if you love agave, that might be an option for you as well. And also for many people who are vegan, that's a great option too, because there's quite a few vegans out there that don't eat honey using maple syrup or agave makes us a completely vegan chocolate, which is also nice if you're planning to gift this. So, of course, then we have to talk a little bit about the dosing math. And this is what I think is really underappreciated about making chocolate this way. And because you're building from scratch, we know every gram of every ingredient, and that means you can calculate your dosing precisely. We like precision. I heard from a friend not that long ago who made a weed pudding and got themselves accidentally very high. Friend, if you're listening to this, you know who you are. They are high for a couple days. We like to be precise if we can. And here's how we're gonna think about it. You know how much infused cacao butter you put into the batch, and you know the potency of the flour, hopefully, and you know how much you used. And that tells you the total milligrams of THC in your cacao butter. And from there, it's just division. You take your total milligrams, divide by the number of pieces that you cut, and you know exactly what each piece contains. A lot of the math does intimidate people, and there's a few things that you know can really affect the potency in the end. One can be if you've grown your own cannabis or you've gotten it from somebody and you don't know the exact potency, you kind of sometimes have to guesstimate based on what you know about the grow, the grower, the cultivar that's being used. But do the math as best that you can. This is a good time to mention that if you need a little help in this area, no shame. That's why I made the calculator over at the Bite Me podcast website. It's a free tool that you can use. I actually actually recently updated that page and the calculator to hopefully make it more user-friendly. Feedback always welcome because I want it to be a useful tool for all of you to use. So even if you had to maybe guesstimate how much THC was in the flour that you used can extrapolate. This is, for example, a 20 milligram piece of chocolate. I would recommend for that first piece of chocolate that maybe, you know, you take a little less. Maybe you cut that piece of chocolate in half just in case to see how your body reacts. And then you'll know for the rest of the batch. This is what taking control of your high life is all about. This is the whole thing. Figuring this shit out so you know what you're eating. So the last thing I wanted to mention before I send you off to your own kitchen because you're going to be wanting to make this homemade chocolate yourself. You can have add-ons to top your chocolate with after. So once you've poured it into the molds, it does, and before it sets, the flaky sea salt that I mentioned already is a classic, but you could do crushed nuts, dried fruit, maybe a little espresso powder. You could do little pinches of chili flakes, or I don't know, it's like a canvas. This is such a great base recipe because you can treat it like a canvas and tailor it to your own preferences. And once again, friends, say it together. Take control of your high life. You're gonna store it in a container, either at room temperature, away from heat and moisture. This probably is not gonna hold up well in hot weather in your pocket. So bear that in mind. I keep mine in the fridge because I prefer that firmer texture and I like the coolness on my tongue when I first pop it into my mouth. And of course, don't forget to label. Always label, even if it's in the fridge. And after the incident that we had with my father, and I know something like chocolate might be a little too hard for him to stay away from. So of course, I did label it, but now it clearly says on the jar on the label, contains weed. And he knows that term. I use the word term weed all the time, and he understands that. You just learned how to make real chocolate from scratch. Three ingredients, one of which you infuse yourself, at a dose you can calculate down to the milligram, and with add-ons and extras that make it your chocolate. And that's not something you can buy at a dispensary, that's not something you find in the shelf in a wrapper with a vague label on it and a price tag that makes you go, oh, or wince. That's yours. You made it in your kitchen with your hands, exactly the way you want it. We are here to empower people to the edibles revolution. Your kitchen's the best dispensary that you'll ever have, and now you can make chocolate. I have covered chocolate before, an even easier chocolate recipe, if you can believe it, and I will share that in the show notes as well. So, with that, my friends, I hope I have inspired you to get into your kitchen to try something different, to do something for yourself. And if you know somebody that also would love to make chocolate, share it with them. Get out your phone right now. Until next time, my dear friends, I am your host, Margaret. Thank you. And stay high.