Kief Krispy’s Budder Balls

“Welcome to Psychedelicatessen, a weekly column exploring the world of cannabis cuisine, including recipes from the great chefs and ganjapreneurs who fuel our appetite for adventure.”

Before the green rush, before states started legalizing pot, before professional chefs started pairing weed with their cuisine, the types of cannabis-infused foods you’d encounter were mostly humble baked goods like brownies, goo balls and Rice Krispie treats, comforting in their simplicity and often delivering an unknown punch of potency.

Just because something is simple doesn’t mean it’s bad. These days, anyone still making pot brownies is facing a lot of competition. So, if you’re going to enter a basic baked good into the High Times Cannabis Cup, well then it had better be the best pot brownie the world has ever seen.

Last summer in Michigan, a humble cereal bar pleased judges with its gooey crunchiness, its lack of telltale cannabis flavor and its accurate dosing, taking a first place prize. Kief Krispy, a relatively unknown competitor, added kief butter to melted marshmallows and cinnamon toast crunch cereal in order to catapult to glory. Even though the entry was a basic baked good, he absolutely nailed it.

Hailing from Rhode Island, the 27-year-old creator of Kief Krispy didn’t want to use his real name, so we’ll call him Kiefer Krispin, or K.K. for short.

A grower for five years and an edibles maker for just two, K.K. took a risk by entering the Cup, saying “it doesn’t hurt to lose.” Serving patients in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, K.K. conducts his business through Instagram and calls himself a “one-man army,” running Kief Krispy entirely independently.

With no retail outlets to middleman his products, K.K. goes directly to patients or through delivery services.

“It’s really about melting the marshmallow low and slow,” K.K. said, when I ask about his cereal bar technique. “And I only use dry sift kief in my butter.”

While the kief can be difficult to obtain, K.K. doesn’t want to switch and use trim, since kief eliminates the herbaceous flavor of cannabis that many consumers can find objectionable.

K.K.’s favorite strain is Purple Chem from Cali Connection, which has copious amounts of potent trichomes for infusing into butter. Lab testing shows that the butter used to make Kief Krispys measures 28 milligrams of THC per milliliter of butter, using quite a simple process. K.K. decarboxylates his kief in the oven at 240ºF for 20 minutes, covered with foil to preserve terpenes. Then, he adds the toasted kief to a Crock-Pot with unsalted, sweet cream butter and sets it on low for 2 to 8 hours before using a Bubblebag to strain kief from the infused butter.

Use this kief infusion to create the cereal bar of your choice, or these Budder Balls, which is K.K.’s favorite family recipe to share over the holidays.

I used one cup of cannabutter tested at 5.18 mg of THC per gram to make these traditional Italian cookies. One cup of butter equals 226.8 grams, for 1,174.8 mg of THC total in the entire batch. Divided amongst 48 cookies, each one would contain approximately 24.48 mg of THC for a comfortable dose.

Kief Krispy can be contacted at Kiefkrispy@yahoo.com.

Budder Balls

Yields 4 dozen

Ingredients:

1 cup of cannabutter
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts
1/4 cup of sugar
pinch of salt
1 cup of powdered sugar

Cream the butter, sugar, salt and vanilla together in a mixer. Add the flour and nuts slowly. Once thoroughly combined, scoop the dough with a spoon and roll into 1-inch balls and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake in a preheated oven at 325ºF for 22 to 25 minutes.

Remove from oven and roll in powered sugar to coat. Let cookies cool before rolling them in powdered sugar again. Enjoy!