Perfect Pot Brownie Recipe Revealed!

Welcome to weed week at the Nirvana Wok blog - our annual look at the world’s most beneficial drug. This time around I’m re-posting stories I wrote when I was writer in residence at Uncle Ike’s Pot Shop. Recreational cannabis had recently become legal in Washington State, and so the industry seemed new and exciting. Now it’s just another corporate business, and the thrill is gone.

A couple of my articles are still at the now-dormant ikes.com, but most were taken down long ago.

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The secret to marijuana brownies is to make the marijuana brownies with kief. These words of wisdom come from Chef Ricky Flickenger – a caterer and former head pastry chef at Trophy Cupcakes who has been cooking with cannabis for decades.

Chef Ricky has partnered with Uncle Ike's for a sold out series of cannabis cooking classes. His pupils are encouraged to stop by the pot shop and pick up a gram of kief (for newbies - kief is the good stuff that falls off of primo buds) to bring to class. Washington State law forbids Chef Ricky from providing marijuana for his classes. It has to be a BYOP situation.

Chef Ricky's secret to cooking with cannabis is to use kief - because you get more bang for your buck. Using buds is fine but it will cost you more when the day is done. And kief is the good stuff - rich in terpenes and THC.

One gram of kief per each student resulted in a full pan of marijuana brownies (12 approximately 10mg servings - it's hard to get an exact dosage with home-made baked goods, so always start with small portions when dosing, says Chef Ricky) and also a pat of cannabis butter to take home.

Chef Ricky says to cook the kief in a 300 degree oven for ten minutes and you're good to go. That's it. The ultimate secret to cooking with cannabis revealed.

He wants you to keep a lid on the kief so that what little water vapor is in there doesn't take some of the valuable terpenes with it when it evaporates. He used color coded ovenproof cupcake cups and each student was assigned a different color.

The students let their successfully decarboxylated kief cool as an exotic, nutty smell filled the kitchen. I was getting a contact high for sure. Chef Ricky pointed out that kief itself can come in different colors from green to tan to brown and will darken slightly after cooking.

If I have learned anything in this life, it is that to make marijuana butter for brownies and whatnot just melt some butter, let it cool and add your decarbed kief. Thanks Chef Ricky!

We interrupt this pot shop blog article to bring you a great kitchen tip from Chef Ricky. "When breaking open eggs crack them not on the edge of a bowl or table but on a flat surface. Cracking them at an angle can create tiny shell shards that shoot back in to the egg. A flat surface provides a way for the shell to crack evenly and in large pieces."

In addition to brownies students made lemon curd (with Chef Ricky's indispensable microplane grater for zesting the lemon), cannabis pie crust (pate brisee) for bacon, shrimp and jalapeno hand pies (oh hell yeah!) and bruschetta with THC olive oil.

After almost three hours of cooking and sampling, everybody went away happy.

Chef Ricky will travel to your home kitchen to teach a class. He also does sessions out of his Capitol Hill condo. People in States that are not Washington, Oregon, Colorado or Alaska (plus D.C.) only wish that they could have Chef Ricky come over. But that might mean jail for them. It is the world we live in right now. Brownies and freedom for some. Jail for others.

Chef Ricky's Evil Pot Brownies

Gather the following ingredients:
Soft Butter, for greasing the pan
Flour, for dusting the buttered pan
4 large Eggs
1 cup Sugar
1 cup Brown sugar
8 ounces melted, Unsalted Canna Butter
1 1/4 cups Dark Cocoa
2 tsp Vanilla Extract
1/2 cup AP Flour
1/2 tsp Kosher Salt

Gather the following equipment:
Mixer
8 inch baking pan
Small sauce pan
Sharp knife
Cutting board
Measuring cups
Measuring spoons

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Butter and flour an 8-inch pan.

In a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the eggs and both sugars, mix well until sugars dissolve and the mixture is thick. Add remaining ingredients, butter last, and mix to combine.

Immediately pour the batter into a greased and floured 8-inch square pan and bake for 45 -60 minutes. Check for doneness with a toothpick or thin knife, tip of knife should have just a little gooey batter on it. When it's done, remove to a rack to cool. Resist the temptation to cut into it until it's had a chance to set, 10 - 15 minutes.

—Alex

-The Uncle Ike’s Blog - August 2015