What could possibly be more British than the humble fruit crumble? And what could possibly be a better and tastier sounding rhyme?

In the Co-op the other day I noticed that they were selling gooseberries. Quite simply, I had to have them. Everyone loves a crumble and I hadn’t had a gooseberry crumble since I was a kid. I thought I’d make this childhood favourite of mine a little more adult.

You can serve this however you like; plain, with cream, ice-cream or custard. I’m going to suggest you use custard, and make that a little more ‘adult’ too

We’ll start with the custard as this will be a little time consuming.

Ingredients

• 55ml/2fl oz single cream
• 570ml/1 pint whole milk
• 4g finely ground bud or hash OR 8g finely ground leaves
• 1 vanilla pod or ½ tsp vanilla extract
• 4 egg yolks
• 30g/1oz caster sugar
• 2 level tsp cornflour

Method

You need to start by infusing the weed into the milk and cream. Pour the milk and cream into a bowl suspended over a pan of water, or a bain-marie, add the weed and allow this to simmer gently for at least 30 minutes. Keep stirring and add more milk and cream if too much evaporates. Allow this to cool then pour through a fine sieve to try and remove the lumps. (I don’t usually bother removing the lumps when cooking but nobody likes lumpy custard!)

Pour the milk/cream/weed mixture into a saucepan (check that you still have 625ml/1 pint 2fl oz of liquid) together with the vanilla pod (if you are using extract, hold on – we’ll come to this later!) and slowly bring to a simmering point over a low heat. If you were using a fresh vanilla pod remove it at this stage.

Whisk the egg yolks, sugar and cornflour together in a bowl until well blended.

Pour the hot milk and cream onto the eggs and sugar mix, constantly whisking all the time with a balloon whisk. Return this mixture to the pan, add your vanilla extract (if using) and heat over a very low heat stirring gently with a wooden spatula until the custard thickens.

Pour into a jug and serve at once.

So! You’ll be needing that crumble to serve it over! I’m going for an old English garden feel with this one; of course you can use any fruit you like – rhubarb, peach and raspberry, apple and blackberry to name just a few – but I’m feeling so terribly nostalgic for this old favourite that I thought I would share it with you.

Ingredients

• 400g/14oz gooseberries
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 170g/6oz plain flour
• 85g/3oz Cannabutter
• 85g/3oz caster sugar

Method

Top and tail and wash the gooseberries.

Put them in a saucepan with the brown sugar and a small amount of water and simmer gently until the gooseberries go soft. I like my gooseberries to be quite tart, so add more sugar if you have a sweeter tooth.

Once they are cooked you may find that you have a lot of liquid in the pan. You can drain some of the liquid and keep it for anything else that you like.

Put your cooked gooseberries in an oven dish.

Now for the fun and messy part. Sift the flour into a bowl and add the caster sugar and cannabutter. Using your hands mix this together well  until it feels a little like bread crumbs. Pour this mixture over the top of the gooseberries.

Place in an oven at 160C until topping is golden brown. Serve with the hot custard and enjoy!

I had a request for one or two more vegan recipes on here. The simplest thing to do for all you vegan cannabis enthusiasts out there would simply be to replace the cannabutter in any recipes for a vegan version.

However, I appreciate that a lot of baking recipes also contain eggs, so here’s a rather scrum-didily-umptious animal-free recipe for coconut cookies. For this recipe I’m going to suggest that instead of soy margarine which is good for baking, you use coconut oil instead, just to add extra depth and flavour!

A good rule of thumb when dissolving your cannabis into fat is for every 40g of fat, add just over a gram of bud or hash, or just over 2 grams of leaves. Make sure you cook it slowly to ensure that all the THC is dissolved and doesn’t get burned off!

Ingredients

60g cannabis infused coconut oil
1 banana, thoroughly mashed
glace cherries – sliced in half
150g plain flour
125g caster sugar
75g desiccated coconut

Method

• Firstly put your coconut oil and sugar into a bowl and mix together until smooth.
• Mix in the mashed banana.
• Take two large tablespoons of desiccated coconut and keep to one side. We’ll be needing this later! Add the rest of the coconut to the cookie batter, and finally add the flour. Mix this together to form and firm-ish dough.
• Divide the dough into balls approximately an inch or two in diameter and roll these in the coconut you put aside earlier.
• Place these balls onto a lined baking sheet and flatten them ever so slighty. Not too much though, as they will spread out during cooking! Incidentally, make sure you leave space between them, otherwise you’ll end up with one giant cookie. (This may not be such a bad thing!)
• Press half a glace cherry into the middle of each cookie

Bake in an oven pre-heated to 180C for about 15 mins or until they are starting to turn light brown. Remove from the oven, cool and eat!

Cannabis Cuisine has been sadly neglected over smoking for a long time now. In eastern cultures cannabis has been ingested for thousands of years, but it appears that in the west many people would much prefer to smoke rather than cook.

It is easy to see why; a joint is much quicker and more convenient than spending an hour in the kitchen and then waiting another hour for it to take effect. However, there are many benefits to eating as opposed to smoking, and this is why I have been able to kick my smoking habit in the bum, and now only ingest my tasty herbs! I have tried giving up smoking cigarettes so many times in the past that I cannot remember, but always started again because of the tobacco I used in joints. By giving up the joints but not giving up my marijuana habit I have effectively cut tobacco out of my life.

This leads me to the most obvious benefit of ingesting rather than smoking; your health. No smoke means no carcinogens entering your lungs. No smoke means no nasty cough and sore throat.

It is also less anti-social; I am able to take a couple of cookies or brownies wherever I go, and I do not get frowned upon for eating, but you cannot smoke just anywhere. Also eating does not attract unwanted attention from police or other authorities when you are out and about. You couldn’t walk down the street smoking a doobie, but no-one will bat an eyelid to you sitting in the park and eating a piece or two of flapjack!

You can get much stronger effects from ingesting than from smoking, and when cooked in higher doses with the right ingredients can even produce a psychedelic high of the kind usually associated with much stronger drugs. The effect also lasts much longer which is an attractive prospect, particularly for medicinal users who may not be able to roll and smoke a joint at regular intervals during the day.

Finally, when cooking with cannabis nothing goes to waste. If you were to buy an amount of cannabis then find that you had a lot of stalk and stems you may be disappointed as this is not good to smoke. However it can easily be turned into a tincture with alcohol. If you were growing and had a male plant you may be disappointed with the obvious lack of buds to smoke, but leaf is just as good as bud in cannabis cuisine.

So now you know the benefits, get cracking on some of our amazing recipes!

The hippy in me has wanted to try this for a while. Bhang is traditionally drunk in India during the celebrations of Holi, and is used as a way of boosting meditation and to achieve transcendental states.

This is not an easy recipe, I must be honest. It takes time and can be pretty fiddly. However, it tastes delicious, a little like chai, although as with all our recipes on here, don’t go drinking it all in one go, as this stuff is potent.

Ingredients

• 2 Cups of water
• 4 Cups of warm full fat milk.
• 1 oz marijuana (fresh leaves and flowers of a female plant is best)
• 2 tablespoons blanched and chopped almonds
• 1/8 teaspoon garam masala
• ¼ teaspoon powdered ginger
• 1 teaspoon rosewater
• 1 cup of sugar

You will also need

• Teapot and cover
• Muslin cloth
• Mortar and pestle

Method

Bring the water to a rapid boil and pour into a clean teapot, together with the marijuana (remove and seeds and twigs first.) Leave this to brew for about 7 minutes. Once brewed strain the mixture through a piece of muslin cloth. Collect the water and save. Take the leaves and flowers and squeeze between your hands to extract any liquid that remains. Add this to the collected water.

Place the freshly squeezed leaves and flowers into your mortar and add 2 teaspoons of warm milk. Slowly, so as not to spill any, but firmly, grind the milk and leaves together. Gather this pulp up and squeeze out as much of the milk as you can into a bowl. Repeat the process until you have used about ½ cup of milk.

Keeping the marijuana leaves and flowers in the mortar, add the chopped almonds and some more warm milk, and grind this in your mortar until a fine paste is formed. Squeeze this paste and collect the extract as before. Repeat a few more times until all you have left are some fibres and nut meal. This residue can then be discarded.

Combine the milk and the water that the marijuana was brewed in.  Add the garam masala, dried ginger and rosewater, sugar and any remaining milk. Chill and serve!

Summer is well and truly upon us, so whilst it is here we may as well make the most of it and get those barbecues out! (And if the rain does come, well, what could be more traditional than that?)

To go with whatever you are cooking why not try this fantastic BBQ Sauce to make your party go with a bang? It is incredibly easy to make and goes well with anything and everything!

You will need Cannabis Butter for this (please see Cookies recipe if you don’t already know how to make it.)

You will need;

• 2 tablespoons of cannabis butter
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 240ml tomato ketchup
• 120ml apple cider vinegar
• 85g brown sugar
• ½ teaspoon chipotle
• 2 tablespoons vegetarian Worcestershire sauce (or mushroom ketchup)
• 2 teaspoons chilli powder
• ½ teaspoon Tabasco sauce (optional)

To make the sauce, melt the butter on a low heat and add the chopped onion. Cook gently until the onion is golden. Add all other ingredients and continue to cook gently for 30 minutes, stirring continuously.

That’s it! And believe me it really is delicious. Try it on barbecued vegetable kebabs (the thought of which is making my mouth water as I type) and my partner informs me that it is also mind-blowingly delicious on burgers too.

Happy Summer!