Baked Science: Blood Orange Caramels

Welcome to Baked Science, a new series of cannabis-infused edible reviews featuring test results from SC Labs.

I’ve had about a thousand cannabis caramels, and for such a basic confection, it can be surprisingly hard to get right. Cannabis caramels can be too sticky, too greasy, too grainy, or have an overwhelmingly gross BHO flavor. I love caramel with ice cream, or sauces like dulce de leche, or pairing caramel with apples, but the candies are usually disappointing and end up stuck in my teeth.

That said, the Choose Love Blood Orange Caramel intrigued me due to its unique flavor. Retailing for $3 for a 25 milligram dose of THC, Choose Love also offers caramels at 100 mg of THC for $10. Besides the Blood Orange, there’s also an Apple Pie flavor.

The packaging is an inventive little envelope made with 100 percent recycled cardstock. Despite the small size of the package, the label included some valuable information, including an ingredients list, standard warnings and a nutritional facts label with a calorie count of 81. The ingredients include heavy cream, sugar, blood orange puree, corn syrup, unsalted butter and cannabis extract—nothing very healthy, but at least there’s no preservatives! Unfortunately, there’s no dosage advice or contact info for the company, which would be appreciated.

At 7:28 p.m., I consumed the entire caramel, intending to enjoy a mild, relaxing dose of THC. While the flavor of the extract is evident, it’s counteracted by the blood orange and caramel. The higher dose of 100 mg is likely to have much more of a pronounced cannabis flavor. The texture of the caramel is just right, not too hard or too sticky, and overall it’s very tasty.

Over an hour later, at 8:47 p.m., I wasn’t feeling much of an effect, but that’s not unusual. Depending on what you’ve eaten that day, your cannabis dose can take two hours or more to fully kick in. Not even ten minutes later, I was beginning to feel more relaxed, and by 9:49 p.m., over two hours later, I was definitely feeling the dose ,but it was mild.

At 10:37 p.m., the cannabis was still barely perceptible, and I was wondering how much THC was really in this caramel. Usually 25 milligrams feels more potent, so perhaps my tolerance has increased. If you ingest THC on several consecutive days, you’ll quickly build up a tolerance to the effects and need to increase your dose.

SC Labs results for the Choose Love Blood Orange Caramel came back as follows: 17.36 milligrams total THC, 0.25 mg of CBD and 0.63 mg of CBN. The amount of THCa came back relatively low, with .04 mg per gram. So I was correct to notice that my supposed 25 milligram dose seemed weak.

At $3, this product provides a milligram of THC for about 17 cents, so while it’s an affordable, low dose option, there’s still better deals available. Delivering almost eight fewer milligrams of THC than promised is more troubling, since that’s a deficiency of 32 percent. Most reputable edibles companies these days are able to stay within 5 – 10 percent of their label claims. Choose Love will need to continue to modify their production techniques to insure that patients are getting what they pay for.