How to Make Cannabis Ice Cream

Edibles have quickly become the go-to option when it comes to medicating discreetly or just having a good time. While dispensaries carry a huge variety of different edible confections and candies, the fact of the matter is that you can infuse THC with just about anything — even ice cream.

Cannabis ice cream isn’t expensive to make and doesn’t require any special equipment to get started. The process is actually pretty straightforward and will only take about 15 minutes, plus another 3 hours for the ice cream to set. Below, we’re diving into a basic vanilla cannabis ice cream recipe. Once you get the hang of this recipe, you can start experimenting with your own flavors and ingredients. Here’s everything you need to know about how to make cannabis ice cream.

What’s the point of making a weed ice cream? 

There are a lot of reasons to like weed ice cream, starting with the fact that it’s a different type of edible experience that you’re not going to find at most dispensaries. Further, while smoking is quick and efficient, the edible high is completely different altogether. An edible high is a little spacier and more out of body, and it also lasts significantly longer than a smoke sesh. While you do have to wait about an hour for it to kick in, once it does you can expect to enjoy it for up to 8 hours.

You might also like trying weed ice cream if you’re trying to cut down on smoking or if you can’t use marijuana unless it’s discreet. Your home state may also not even sell edibles at the dispensaries yet, so you’ll have to make your own anyway to enjoy the type of high edibles have to offer.

A word to the wise: Start low and go slow. 

Before you enjoy homemade cannabis ice cream, remember to start low and go slow. Like all edibles, marijuana ice cream can take up to three hours to kick in, especially if you eat it after a meal. To have a good experience with edible ice cream, remember to take your time and be patient. You will eventually start to feel it. Homemade edibles aren’t perfectly dosed like dispensary edibles, so when in doubt, take your time and wait.

The alternative is a situation where you take too much and have an unpleasant experience. Practically everyone has a bad edible story thanks to impatience, and once they take that second dose, both doses kick in and suddenly they’re astral projecting. Be safe! Start with a low dose and take your time to feel it out. For more accurate edible dosages in your homemade edibles, try this dosage calculator.

Start by infusing THC to whipping cream. 

For edibles to work, THC molecules need fat molecules to bind to. Most weed ice cream recipes call for butter or oil, but the end result doesn’t taste as good as ice cream made properly with heavy cream. That said, it’s just an extra step to infuse THC to heavy cream. Just like making butter, you’ll first decarboxylate your cannabis and then infuse it to the heavy cream using a saucepan. Once you have the infused whipping cream, you can make the ice cream. Here’s how to get that done:

1. Decarb your cannabis
   Cannabis flowers contain THCa which transforms into THC-v (the kind that gets you high) when you heat it up. That’s why you can smoke flowers and get high, but you can’t just eat the flowers by themselves and feel remotely intoxicated. To do it, just break up your flowers and place them on a foil-lined baking sheet. You’ll then bake it in the oven at 220-245°F for 30-45 minutes. Take care to stir the flowers to get an even toast and to prevent the flowers from burning.
2. Combine decarboxylated cannabis with whipping cream.
   If you follow the dosage calculator and tweak it to your preferences per serving, you’ll have an easier time calculating how much dry herb and how much cream you’ll need. Edible potency varies a lot based on the potency of the flower used for the infusion as well as how long you infuse the cannabis to the cream. The easiest way to infuse THC to heavy cream is to add the decarboxylated cannabis and the cream to a saucepan and bring it to a boil. As soon as it’s boiling, reduce the heat and let it simmer for 45 minutes to 2 hours, taking care to stir and avoid burning.
3. Strain and Refrigerate
   Once that’s done, you’ll strain the mixture into a container using a cheesecloth to ensure no cannabis particles make their way into the final container. From there you’ll just refrigerate it until you’re ready to use it.

Why not use cannabis oil or butter instead? 

Plain and simply, butter or oil doesn’t belong in ice cream. When you’re making a weed ice cream recipe, the flavor will be more like ice cream than butter or oil. While you absolutely could just drizzle some cannabis oil over a bowl of premade ice cream, that changes up the dosage. Regardless, you’ll still get high all the same. It’s just a matter of what tastes better in a made-from-scratch recipe.

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How much cannabis ice cream should you eat? 

There’s a lot of different factors that go into how potent a weed ice cream recipe will be. The science is a little murky for precise milligram dose amounts, but we highly recommend using a dosage calculator to help you with some of the math before jumping into the recipe. If you know you really like ice cream and can eat an entire pint in one sitting, you’re going to want to make a low-dose batch so you can have the best of both worlds.

Check and double check your math so that you can have a better estimate of how your recipe will affect you, and as we mentioned before, take your time with homemade edibles. Start with a small bite to see how it will affect you and be patient while you wait. Once you have an idea of their strength, you’ll be able to gauge your serving size more accurately for yourself.