Easy Cannabis Infused No Bake Fudge

Margaret 00:00:06 Welcome friends, to episode 275. Today we are doing no bake fudge. Welcome to Bite Me, the show about edibles where I help you take control of your high life. I'm your host and Certified Ganjier Margaret and I love helping cooks make safe and effective edibles at home. I'm so glad you're here. And greetings, friends. You are joining Margaret me for another episode of Bite Me. And if you're just tuning in for the first time, I've got something simple and delicious for you today. And if you've been around for a while, thank you for being here. And thank you for the new listeners too. I love you all, and I am so happy that I'm not sitting here talking to myself, because that's what I would be doing otherwise. But it's so nice to know that there are other edibles enthusiasts out there, like me, who are interested in that radical self-reliance. Making your own medicine, creating infused treats that you can share with friends and family. Maybe some of you are growers as well, so that you are even able to produce some of the cannabis that you're putting into your own edibles as well.

Margaret 00:01:12 Taking that radical self-reliance one step further, and if you don't have the opportunity to grow for whatever reason, maybe you can make friends with somebody who does, because sharing is caring. Now, I don't really have a lot to start out with for today's episode, so let's do a little stoner trivia, because I kind of do like these stoner questions. Stoner trivia questions. It's a remarkable to me sometimes how I get a lot of these questions wrong myself. Some of them because I guess a lot of it's cannabis pop culture type stuff that I may not be super familiar with because I had a very strict Christian upbringing and, cannabis culture was not part of that. Surprise, surprise. So before we get into today's episode, a question from Stoner Trivia raced to 420. I'm taking a card from the deck randomly. I've not looked at this card ahead of time. You and I are both going to hear it together for the first time. And the question is culture. It's a culture question. Which Prince of England admitted to experimenting with cannabis in 2003? Was it Prince William, Prince Charles or Prince Harry? I have to admit that following the latest events and milestones and happenings and dramas within the Royal family is not something that I really pay much attention to.

Margaret 00:02:49 There's kind of more important things going on in the world for me. I know some people are really into that stuff, so you might have a better inkling as to the answer for this particular question, although it might also not surprise you. The answer because even though I don't really follow it, some of these folks have a hard time staying out of the mainstream news. So the question is, which Prince of England admitted to experimenting with cannabis in 2003? Prince William, Prince Charles or Prince Harry? And if you guessed Prince Harry, you would be correct. And I think that would elicit a little cheering and give yourself a pat on the back. And with that, we can get into today's episode. The meat and potatoes, the fudge and nuts, if you will, of this episode. And of course, if you want to leave a review so that I can read one of those out next week or leave a fan mail, I would be happy to spend some time doing that too. But that's up to you.

Margaret 00:03:54 Today we're talking about fudge. I'm recording this in November And holidays are on the horizon. Sometimes I realize how quickly they're arriving already. It's giving me a little bit of anxiety for a few different reasons. I mean, it just seems like there's a lot of expectations this time of year, and I'm really trying to sort of step back and decide what's really important to me because I don't want Christmas. The holidays, whatever it is that you're celebrating, to become super commercial, and that seems to be the way the world is going. I mean, it's been going this way for a long time. As we all know, if you happen to have a Costco membership and you've been in Costco recently, you know that those Costco ornaments and chocolates and Christmas stuff has been out for a long time. Like before Halloween, they had some Christmas stuff out, and once Halloween was over, it was bam, Christmas, everything. Christmas, Christmas, Christmas. And you know, I do love the holidays. This holiday is going to be a little bit different for me, because it's the first time in 15 years that I haven't celebrated with, well, I was with somebody for 15 years and that won't be happening this year.

Margaret 00:04:55 So I know it's going to look a bit different and that's probably going to bring up some stuff for me, I'm sure. But I have lots of support and I'm not too concerned about that. And I but I really want to participate in Christmas in a way that reflects the values that I espouse. As a result, I think we may be doing a smaller Christmas gift exchange instead of, you know, feeling like you have to give gifts to every single person that you know. But there are some people in my list that I do want to give some things to. So I will be making a lot of those things, because I think making something by hand is really a beautiful gift, and they do always seem to be appreciated. So body Care products is definitely high on the list, as are edibles and sometimes the non infused treats for those who don't consume, although some of those folks may also be getting topicals because if you make body care products and topicals infused with cannabis, it's a wonderful way to introduce somebody to cannabis who would otherwise not be interested.

Margaret 00:05:49 Everybody could probably use a little bit of topical cannabis in their life. You know, there's not too many people out there who have zero aches and pains ever. And it can really make a big difference in the, you know, in somebody's life. I know personally I suffer from lower back pain because as a woman in my 40s, like, who doesn't. But topicals really make it tolerable and reduce the pain quite a bit. So it's a lovely gift to give to somebody else. And of course, some of those body care products won't be infused, but a lot of them will be as well. So if you're interested in body care products, I did record that episode with Amanda Breese recently. You should check that one out because she knows her stuff when it comes to creating topicals that are infused with our beloved cannabis. Now, I was kind of going off there a little bit, as I tend to do. I've had quite a bit of coffee today, actually less than my usual amount, but because of the way I'm starting to change my coffee ritual, it's having more of an impact when I do drink it.

Margaret 00:06:47 And so here we are today. Like I said, we were talking about fudge. And the beautiful thing about fudge is that it is a no bake recipe and very easy to do. And so if you're looking to make a sweet treat for somebody or for yourself, this is a worthwhile recipe too. Even though it's no bake, you still do have to melt some ingredients together. But that's pretty easy to do. And if you want something relatively fast to put together because you're going to some kind of event or potluck or something where you want to bring something sweet with you, and maybe it's not infused or or you're infusing it with something like CBD, which you should still tell people if you have put CBD in your creations. But, it's really easy to put together. Like it says. I got this recipe from Isabel Eats No Bake easy fudge recipe and prep time ten minutes. Now, you do have a refrigerator for a couple of hours, but that's obviously hands off time. So what do you need for this recipe? You need a can of sweetened condensed milk, semi-sweet chocolate chips, unsalted butter.

Margaret 00:07:56 You're going to infuse that butter. That's where the infusion point is. Sea salt ground cinnamon vanilla and a half cup of unsalted chopped nuts. And the author of this recipe said they used cashews and walnuts. I used chopped cashews, Brazil nuts and pecans because I had those. Actually, I have walnuts too. I could have done that as well, but that's what I just grabbed and that's it. So a lot of these are going to be items you already have on hand. I mean, a lot of people have that can of sweetened condensed milk in the back of the cupboard. I have been buying more bags of semi-sweet chocolate chips lately, because I know I'll be doing more baking between now and the end of this calendar year. Yes, 2024 is the end of 2024 is on the horizon. It's a little horrifying, but yeah, this is a recipe that you you don't have to find any specialty ingredients. If you do have to go out and get something, you can find them easily at any grocery store, small or large.

Margaret 00:08:52 That's the other thing I like about this. Even if you have a small grocery store that is handiest to you? Without a doubt, they're going to have some kind of semi-sweet chocolate chips and sweetened condensed milk. Now the fun part about this is a little while ago, I was doing some experimenting with my immersion circulator because I do have a sous vide immersion circulator. I love that thing. I have recently made butter in it after a long hiatus. And listen, if you're listening to this, you're going to probably get some butter for your birthday and some fresh made bread because along with some other things, because her birthday's coming up and she loves my bread. And what says I love you like homemade butter to go along with that homemade bread, but I digress. You can use it for all kinds of things, but one of the cool things I came across was this tip that if you have a can of sweetened condensed milk, you can peel the label off because it's going to come off anyway because it's going into a water bath, but you can take the entire can and put it into a water bath, and then you can sous vide that can of sweetened condensed milk.

Margaret 00:09:57 Now, depending how long you sous vide it for it will, the sweetened condensed milk will come out as various shades of caramel. So if you do it for the least amount of time, it's going to be pretty liquidy, not super caramelly. And if you do it for the longest amount of time, it's going to be quite thick. And so I tried that a little while ago. I labeled, I took the I, I did what I was supposed to do with the time and temperature. I'll have to look it up again to remind myself, and I'll include it in the show notes, but you put it in for the correct time and temperature. I left it on for the longest amount of time, and then because the label is off it, it was going to come off anyway. In the water bath. I labeled it with a sharpie afterwards, and I put it in a cupboard and lo and behold, when I went to go make this fudge, that kind of sweetened condensed milk was in there that had been turned into caramel.

Margaret 00:10:49 And I used that in lieu of the unsweetened or not unsweetened, the UN caramelised sweetened condensed milk. And let me tell you, it was fantastic. So if you have a sous vide immersion circulator, I recommend you try doing that, because I did it a long time ago and I just put it in the cupboard and it was fine. And that's kind of neat because you can sort of prepare this caramel ahead of time. And then when you want to use it for something, it's already there. And of course, caramel and semi-sweet chocolate chips are two things that go together beautifully. So if you try this technique, then that's how I did it in this particular instance, because I didn't have regular sweetened condensed milk, I just had this stuff that I had made a while back and thought, well, now's the time to use it, if ever. So that was the only little difference that I did in particular to this recipe. Besides of course, adding infused butter instead of regular butter. Now, I should mention I did use CBD once again for this one because I'm finally.

Margaret 00:11:54 I'm finding it awfully hard when I start to make recipes. I might have to start making two batches. And I'll tell you why. Because my dad, as many of you probably know, has a sweet tooth and I've been leaving him out. I'll leave him out like a little dish with a piece of fudge on it. And sometimes I'll see him in the kitchen and he'll see it there, and his eyes will light up like I just left him $1 million sitting there or something like that. And that's kind of a nice feeling. He loves the sweets. The homemade sweets are so much better than some of the other stuff that you can buy anyway, because I control the ingredients that go into them, and I can buy the types of ingredients that, you know, if I want to buy organic, then I go ahead and do that for, for instance. So and they're made with love as well. So just kind of makes me happy. But if I infuse them with THC, I can enjoy them.

Margaret 00:12:38 And believe you me, I will enjoy them. But I can't really share them with my dad in the same way. So I think I'm actually going to be making a second batch of this stuff, and I'm going to make two batches, one for me and one for we. The beauty of this recipe is how easy it is. And let me tell you who doesn't love fudge? If you're going to something and you want like a potluck or something like that, you want to bring a little sweet treat, this is a good one to bring. The holiday is coming. I mean, a little infused, a little infused fudge with a little milk, maybe. Or if you're just relaxing and you're having, like, a tea or something in the evening. Good for all occasions. But what you're going to do is you're going to line the bottom of a baking pan with some parchment paper. You spray that with a little bit of nonstick spray, and then in a saucepan over low heat, you're going to add the butter and you're going to let that melt.

Margaret 00:13:31 Now it only calls for a teaspoon of butter, but you could easily add a little bit more than that if you need it for a more infusion power, if you will. Once you've melted the butter, you're going to add your chocolate chips, your sweetened condensed milk. You whisk those together until they're pretty melted, and then you add your sea salt, cinnamon, vanilla. You make sure it's all well combined and you remove it from the heat. That's when you add in your chopped nuts. The and the nuts I had were not pre chopped, but they are very easy to chop. So no worries there. And then you add it to your baking pan. You press it so that it's nice and even as much as possible. Then you cover and refrigerate for a couple of hours. And that's it. So easy. If I had one of those easy buttons from staples, bam! I'd be slamming that button right now. I hope everybody knows what I'm talking about. Do they do those easy button? Do they do those easy button commercials in the States? I don't know, but that is it.

Margaret 00:14:32 So yeah, if you want to create something that is delicious and sweet and the nice thing is because it is relatively sweet, you don't really need big pieces of it. And the nuts in it as well, combined with the sweetened condensed milk and the chocolate chips, make it a pretty satisfying sweet treat. So a small piece is usually adequate. You're not necessarily being like, oh, I need to go get more. Although, if I'm being completely honest, there have been a couple of occasions when I've eaten a couple at a time, but we're not going to talk about that right now. And I feel like this is the type of recipe as well that is really adaptable. So if you wanted to add something other than the nuts in it, or maybe change up some of the spices you threw in perhaps or something, this is a is a recipe that would be pretty adaptable to your needs. If you wanted to try something like maybe coconut butter, coconut oil instead of the butter, I'm sure it would work okay, or ghee or something like that.

Margaret 00:15:22 I'm sure you could do that too, depending on what you happen to have on hand. So easy, delicious and you should try it easily. Infusible even with I know it says only one tablespoon of butter, but a lot of the times when I test some of my oils with the tea check, I will get results like five millilitres or sorry, 5mg/ml. So when you think about that, it doesn't sound like a whole lot, but 5mg/ml is going to be 75mg per tablespoon, which, you know, if you cut that into small squares, say, 16 squares as it's recommending, that is only about five milligrams per square. So once again, if you want to add a little more of your infused butter to it, you could do that. Or if you had a stronger one, this one would also probably work quite well if you're using some kind of concentrate too, because you could probably also stir that in. At the end is another infusion point if you wanted to, like if you had a little bit of any kind of concentrate really like an ISO or, or something like that.

Margaret 00:16:35 So just be mindful of your dosing. If you're unsure, you can always go over to the calculator on Bite Me podcast. Com it's free for anybody to use. And I also include the math at the very bottom of the page if you scroll to the bottom, because I recognize also that not everybody is going to run out and buy a track as wonderful as they are and useful they are. You know, they're not inexpensive. You are purchasing a handheld mass spectrometer is quite a bit of technology right there in the palm of your hand, but you can still get a pretty good idea of how potent your edibles are by using a calculator online, like the one over on Buy Me podcast.com, so I recommend you try that out. Try out this recipe. Let me know how you've used it, how you modified it for your own purposes, and hit me up and let me know how it goes. I would love to hear. I always love hearing from you folks. And with that, my friends, I think that's it for this week.

Margaret 00:17:29 I do encourage you right now if you enjoyed this episode, a text to a friend who might also be interested in fudge, or just talking about edibles in general, playing around with some fun things for the new year. So keep listening for that. But thank you for listening today. Thank you for being here and spending a few minutes with me. Until next week, my friends. I'm your host, Margaret. Stay. Hi.