Many people mistakenly assume you can infuse cannabis straight into honey, but it’s not very effective. The best and easiest way to make cannabis-infused honey such as THC honey or CBD honey is actually to mix it with some infused coconut oil.
In today’s blog, I’ll teach you how to make the best, easiest canna-honey.
How NOT To Infuse Cannabis Into Honey
When I first started cooking with cannabis I got really excited and tried to infuse literally EVERYTHING. I had a ton of successes, like my favorite canna-granola recipe, but … I also screwed up a lot like the first time I worked with honey.
Now you get to learn from my mistakes!
How did I mess up? Well, like lots of people, I tried to infuse cannabis right into honey, kind of the same way that we infuse into oil or into alcohol. Let me tell you, IT DOES NOT WORK! Sure, you’ll get some THC or CBD into your sweet sticky goodness, but you won’t’ get much and what you WILL get a lot of is HORRIBLE CLEAN-UP. Seriously, think about straining cannabis flower from honey. It’s worse than that.
If you’ve been here a while, you know I’m all about easy recipes that don’t make my kitchen look like a bomb went off (although, truth be told it almost always looks like a bomb went off.)
So, why doesn’t it work? The molecules in cannabis like THC and CBD love to bind with fats like olive oil or butter and you can also strip them off the plant with alcohol.
But they are not attracted to honey (or sugar or water) so if you try, you’re just going to end up with a very weakly infused mess.
Prefer to watch the video? Click here to watch it on YouTube!
How to Make Cannabis-Infused Honey (THC or CBD Honey)
Now that we know what NOT to do, what is the best way to get canna-honey? It’s simple actually! All you have to do is mix honey with already infused cannabis coconut oil and some sunflower lecithin. Seriously, it’s that simple.
Cannabis-Infused Honey Recipe | THC or CBD Honey
Ingredients:
1 part cannabis-infused coconut oil (or MCT oil for a more liquid consistency)
3 parts honey
1 teaspoon-1 tablespoon of sunflower lecithin per cup of honey
For example, if I wanted to make 1 cup of infused honey, I’d mix ¼ cup infused oil with ¾ cup honey and I’d have my 1:3 ratio.
Ingredient Notes:
Need to know how to infuse coconut oil? Here’s a video on how to do it with distillate.
If you use coconut oil, you’ll need to do more work to make sure it doesn’t separate when cooling and it will be harder to scoop if you store it in the fridge (or live in Canada 🍁.)
If you use MCT oil, it’ll stay more liquidy, but I don’t love how oily it feels in my mouth.
The sunflower lecithin is optional but it really helps to keep the oil and honey emulsified. It can also make your edibles feel stronger. However, it has a particular taste, so start with the smallest amount and increase it if necessary.
Preparation:
Add your infused oil, honey, and sunflower lecithin into the top of a double boiler.
Warm the mixture while whisking constantly. You will be able to see that the ingredients are incorporating well.
Pour into a glass mason jar big enough so the mixture doesn’t fill it completely.
As the canna honey cools, shake the jar every 5-15 minutes so that the honey and oil don’t separate.
Store it on the counter for a couple of days or in the fridge.6. Use it exactly how you use non-infused honey! (Canna-Granola is one of my favorites! Check it out here.)
And, you're done! What will you put your canna honey on or in? Please share in the comments.