No Bake Cannabis Stuffed Dates

The Bite Me Version of Alice B. Toklas's Hashish Fudge: No Bake Cannabis Stuffed Dates.

A cookbook from 1954 quietly slipped a cannabis “hashish fudge” recipe between roast chicken and jam and later editions removed it. That little act of edible history still matters, so we’re giving it a modern upgrade that works in real life, especially when it’s too hot to even think about turning on the oven. 

I’m remaking the idea as no-bake stuffed Medjool dates: whole dates split into pockets and filled with a spiced, fruit-and-nut mixture built around infused butter or infused coconut oil.

If you make these, share how they turned out, and please subscribe, leave a review, and send this to a friend who wants better no-bake edibles with clear dosing math.

Ask a question for the upcoming Listener Q&A HERE or send an email to stayhigh@bitemepodcast.com.

Transcript

Welcome And A No-Oven Plan

Margaret 1:13

Welcome to episode 360, and today we are doing stuffed dates, my take on the Alice B. Toklis recipe. Welcome friends to Bite Me The Show About Edibles. I'm your host, Margaret, a certified Gangier, TCI certified educator, and I believe your kitchen is the best dispensary that you'll ever have. Welcome to the show. Grab a snack and let's dive in, shall we? Friends, I'm really glad that you're here with me today. If you're joining for the very first time, welcome. I think you'll find that this is a great recipe to turn to when it's too hot outside to even think about turning on your oven. And where I live, it has been very hot recently. Temperatures have been, you know, over 40 degrees Celsius. I mean, I guess the temperatures necessarily haven't been, but with the humidity and everything, they've been feeling up to 45 degrees, which is insanely hot. And I love the heat. I love summer. Even when it's really hot out, I still try and sit outside because I know it's going to be unbearably cold in a few short months. But even at 45, that's a little bit hot for me, too. It's that kind of hot where the oven stays off. And the only appliance getting turned on is the air conditioning. Am I right, friends? I do feel fortunate that I do have air conditioning because I know there's people out there who don't. And if you're one of those folks, I hope you're staying cool. I mean, they say climate change isn't real, but when I was a kid, one almost nobody had air conditioning for starters. I grew up in Toronto in my elementary school days. That's where I was born. There were several kids on my street. One of my friends on the street had a swimming pool, and I do remember my sister and I comparing our tan lines. Was there sunscreen around back then? Maybe. I do kind of recall using some of it, not to the extent that we do now. It was probably like SBF 15, and that was probably as high as you could get it. But the friend that had the swimming pool also had air conditioning, and that house was freezing,

Heat Waves And Smoke In The Air

Speaker 3:23

freezing, freezing. It was like an icebox. I remember that to this day. But she was the only one on the street of all the kids that we played with that had air conditioning. I don't remember temperatures getting as hot then as they did now, but of course, you know, memory's a funny thing. But anyway, I hope you're finding ways to stay cool and enjoying the weather despite the heat. If that's where you're listening from, because I will say that sometimes I look at the stats of this show and I'm surprised to see that y'all are from like everywhere. Bite meat is worldwide, baby. And that's something that I'm really proud of because it appears that there are people from all over the world who are interested in making their own edibles at home, making them better, making them for less money, taking control of the entire process. We all have that in common, don't we? I'm a little behind on recording this week. And just as I was about to record, I got a fan mail today from a listener in New York, New York State, and they said, What are you Canadians trying to do to me? Kill me. The sky is orange and overcast with smoke from the Canadian wildfires. I searched and could not find anything on New York fires. And I am sorry to hear that. I'm it has been a really weird few days here as well with the wildfire smoke. I'm still in Ontario, and the wildfire smoke has just kind of descended south. It's in northern Ontario. I've seen a few videos online of these fires that are raging up north. And it's some scary stuff. Definitely some scary stuff. So the wildfires are in full force at the moment, it appears, and we had a really windy day yesterday. And so it seems that that's pushed a lot of the smoke southward. Even the Americans can smell it. It's not so bad out today, but yesterday the smoke was just heavy in the air. It was not great. And also not great for people who have to work outside because you wonder, like, what am I breathing in? Sorry, Mr. New York. Not trying to kill you. And you're right. Nothing on the New York fires. I had heard from somebody that some of the fires were in New York State as well, but it appears I was incorrect. So my apologies. I also actually wanted to mention I recently was sent 20 cookies from someone in Australia through Bite Me a Cookie. I just want to say thank you so much for that because that is really meaningful to me. I'm an independent small creator trying to keep it as ad-free as possible. There's no ads on my website, there's no ads on this podcast, there's no ads in the community. By design, we are inundated with ads everywhere we go. But I'm trying to keep Bite Me our safe space. So thank you for that. I really appreciate it. So today I'm talking about one of the oldest cannabis recipes on record, and I'm giving it the Bite Me treatment. And you will not be needing a stove for this one. So before we get into it, I'm going to talk a little bit about the original for a second, briefly about the story behind it, because I did a whole episode about this one. If you haven't heard that one last week, that was last week's episode on Alice B. Tokelis' cookbook. But in 1954, she published this cookbook, Alice B. Tokelis. And

Fan Mail And Keeping It Ad-Free

Speaker 6:42

buried in this cookbook, between recipes for roast chicken and jam and all the things you'd expect to find in a cookbook, she had a recipe called hashish fudge. And she didn't even spell hashish the way we're accustomed to seeing it. But it wasn't, it wasn't chocolate and it wasn't fudge, actually. It was a dense spiced mixture of fruits, nuts, spices, and cannabis. And it was meant to be rolled into a ball and then eaten. I think sliced and then eaten. And Alice included this recipe in the cookbook before it went to publishing. Apparently, the fallout was relatively quick. Some of the editions of the book were pulled because the first publisher that published it in the United States, you have to think this was 1954. They were not really uh super cannabis-friendly at that particular time in history. And the it's one of the earliest documented cannabis edibles recipes in Western print. And so if you can get your hands on a copy of that book, a first edition that includes the hashish recipe, the hashish fudge recipe, then you've

The 1954 Hashish Fudge Story

Speaker 7:52

got real you've really got something. Because the next publisher removed that recipe. They discovered it, a British publisher, and then the further editions, that recipe was removed. I did uh have a look at it. You can check it out yourself. I found it on the Internet Archive, which is a great place to find all kinds of old books, and you can borrow them like a library for free. And so it is kind of fun to check it out if you want to see for yourself. But this recipe was released right in the era of reefer madness style propaganda. And there was at a time when they were telling everyone that this plant would potentially ruin your life. And meanwhile, someone was quietly rolling this hashish fudge in their kitchen. And the gap between that hysteria and the actual reality of edibles makers at that time is a big part of why I love this recipe so much. But that story is for another day. Today, I am wanting to take that original recipe and update it for the way we actually cook now. And so here's the thing about the original tokless fudge. It's not the fudge, it's not fudge in the way we think of fudge. And as I already mentioned, it's like a fruit and nut paste. And it kind of reminds me of like maybe Christmas cake or something like that. It's held together with fat and spice, dates, figs, nut butter, cinnamon, black pepper, rolled into a ball or pressed into a pan. And I've covered a lot of these types of recipes on the show already. I've done majoon energy balls more times than I can count. So when I sat down to do to modernize this recipe, my first job was to make sure that I wasn't just giving you sort of the same thing with a wearing a different hat. What I landed on is stuffed dates. So instead of building the whole thing as a paste, you roll or cut, you're using whole major dates as the vessel and filling it with a version of the original spiced mixture. And it's a completely different format and it's no bake. So it's perfect for a day like today when it's really hot or when you just don't feel like sleeving over a stove and you just want to put something together relatively quickly. And it gives us something original that we've never really done before, friends, which is a built-in civil serving unit that makes dosing a lot easier to talk about as well. That last part matters to me more than anything else. If you've listened for more than one episode, you know I'll always come back to dosing. So let's build this thing. I tested a small batch first, and I wanted to test it because I always try, I always make these things before I record an episode around it, and I wanted to make sure that it worked, and I had to make some adjustments to get the texture right. And this makes enough

Why Stuffed Dates Win

Speaker 10:32

to for about eight or ten dates, perhaps. If you don't end up using the major dates, maybe it'll be more. I recommend the Majuled dates because they're a lot bigger and they often taste a lot better than the regular dates. When my daughter had the vegan restaurant that she ran for five years, they almost always used majuled dates because they just seemed almost fresher. I also happen to love dates. For me, they, as someone with a sweet tooth, they really hit the sweet tooth spot, provide minerals and nutrients that you're not going to get in some other sugary confection. Sometimes dates are a lovely way to sort of satisfy a sweet tooth without going to something overly processed. And so you'll need a couple tablespoons of infused butter or coconut oil softened. This is where your dose lives. So measure this one with intention, not vibes. I did use coconut oil when I was making this because I've been making some coconut oil. I haven't made infused coconut oil in a while. And one of the reasons I had to tweak this recipe is I found the coconut oil was way too overpowering without some of these other ingredients in them. A quarter cup of nut butter. And this was the fix that I needed off my first test. And not because it became too loose to hold its shape, but because the flavor of the coconut oil was way too strong without it. And peanut butter, almond butter, whatever you have in there, whatever you have in the pantry will work. My daughter, when I was telling her, the same one that had the restaurant, when I was telling her, because she actually gave me some major dates, I had dates on hand and I was gonna go out and buy some, and then she was coming over one day and she's like, actually, I have some at home. Would you like them? So she brought them over. And I was telling

Ingredients And Flavor Fixes

Speaker 12:17

her what I was doing, and she was like, you know, cashew butter would be really good in this as well. Now, before you think you have to go out and make and buy cat like really expensive cashew butter or something, if you are someone who tends to have like nuts on hand in your pantry, you can make it. I actually didn't have nut butter on hand, and that kind of took me by surprise because I usually have something in the cupboard, but I realized I'd I had run out and didn't buy any more. But I did have peanuts, so I just made a peanut butter, which you can do quite easily because most of these nut butters, if you're already used to eating a natural nut butter, then you're basically just putting it in a blender. It works pretty good. So don't feel like you have to go out if you want to try something like a cashew butter, because I think it would really, it would really go very beautifully with the dates. That's another one to try. But yeah, any of the nut butters that you've got in the pantry will work. Two tablespoons of finely chopped dried figs, which is a nice little nod back to the original recipe. Now, I have to admit I have tried it with both because I ran out of figs. I had some figs on hand and then I ran out. And so the second time I chopped up some raisins that I had, and that worked quite well too. So I've recently found that figs can be hard to get, they're hard to find. I'm not really sure if there's like some kind of fig shortage that I'm not aware of, but alas, if you don't have figs, just try a different dried fruit. That's the one thing that's really nice about doing these types of recipes, is you can kind of work with whatever you happen to have in your cupboard at the time. One teaspoon of honey or maple syrup. I used maple syrup, I believe. I'm trying to think back. I used maple syrup. And I added a teaspoon of cacao powder at the end. This was my other adjustment, and it kind of does double duty. It deepens the flavor, so this actually reads a little bit more like a fudge and adds a bit more body to the mixture. And I did this before I added the nut butter to it, so that because the coconut oil, like I said, it was just not it was just not hitting right. So I added the cacao powder, and that was really nice. The one teaspoon of cacao powder, but it still needed something else, and that's when I added the nut butter. A quarter teaspoon of cinnamon, a pinch of nutmeg, a pinch of black pepper, and that pepper's not a typo. It's in the original recipe and it plays quite nicely against the sweetness. I don't even find that it has a strong flavor, but it's in there to add that spice element. A quarter teaspoon of orange zest, which I admit when I tried it without the nut butter, I didn't really like at all. But when I added the nut butter, it softened the brightness of that zest and made it work really nicely. So you're gonna get your eight major dates. Oftentimes when you buy them, they are not pitted, so you'll just have to slice them and remove the pit. Slice them lengthwise and don't cut them all the way through because you want that little pocket. And then you are going to mash your softened infused coconut oil with the honey, and then you've put in all the other ingredients and you mix it up. Spoon or pipe about a teaspoon of filling into each date and press it gently closed. And you can chill them a little bit if you would like to before you serve them up. But that's it. No oven, no stove. And I just want to slow down here for a second because this is the part that people skip past and the part that actually matters, but your total dose is sitting entirely in the two tablespoons of infused butter or coconut oil. Whatever the potency of that butter is, you're dividing it across the year eight, 10, 12 dates, however many you end up getting out of it. And so if you know the milligram count, you have a pretty good idea of how much it's going to be for each serving. So just have an idea of that before you go ahead. And I mean, I'm usually now in the habit of dosing things on the lower end so that if I decide that I want to have a second, then I can, but don't assume is what I is what I'm saying. And try and keep obviously, if you're you're figuring a teaspoon works to fill your dates, then try and keep it around that teaspoon for each, and you shouldn't have any problems at all. But of course, if you want to run the numbers properly before your first batch, try the Bite Me Dosage calendar on the website and it's free, and it'll take the guesswork out of it. And I recently updated that page again. So there was a small little fix that I had to make on the calculator

Assembly Steps And Dosing Math

Speaker 16:46

itself because it wasn't sitting inside the page properly. But anyway, it's all ready for the for you to use over there. Take advantage of it, it doesn't cost you anything. Honestly, when I first thought about doing a frozen version of these for a hot day like today, I kind of pictured like some kind of frozen popsicle or stuffed dates on a stick or something like that because it has been very hot here this summer. I don't know. When I started thinking about it more, it would be a good way to chip your tooth or wonder why your fudge tastes like a frozen brick. And the fat content in this mixture just doesn't freeze the way a popsicle base would. So, I mean, there's lots of frozen treats on the website that you can check out if you're looking for something that's more designed that way. You still get zero stove time. So there's something kind of perfect about this whole exercise because 70 years ago, someone slipped a cannabis recipe into a cookbook about roast chicken and got in trouble for it. And here we are, still making fudge, just doing it with better dosing and math and a lot less drama. And honestly, no drama at all if I can help it. And I will say that some of the fudge recipes I've done on the website are some of the most popular ones recipes out there that I have floating around the internet. If you make these, I would love to hear about it. Please let me know. And of course, the Bite Me Dose Diary is out there for you as well if you want to use that. I did if you go to the Bite Me Dose Diary page, there are I think free pages you can download as well. And I appreciate you for being here, for making edibles in your own kitchen instead of paying dispensary prices for someone else's version of this. And let's be honest, you're not gonna find this in a dispensary, you're gonna find candies and consumer packaged goods. I have purchased plenty of dispensary edibles myself. Sometimes they do come in handy. I usually have a few of the cannabis beverages in my fridge because I like to have those when I'm out doing things socially. And there's some convenience to that, and something nice about having a drink in your hand when everybody else is drinking alcohol. Because ever since that January tolerance break that I did, I did a dry January as well, and I still haven't had a drink. And is it forever? I don't know. I'm just doing it, riding it out until I don't feel like riding it out no more. But in the meanwhile, cannabis beverages are where it's at. I do get it. The dispensaries do offer a service, but your kitchen is really the best dispensary that you'll ever have. And I think we're all here because we all think the same thing. So, my friends, I'm your

Tools, Freebies, And Closing Thoughts

Speaker 19:02

host Margaret. Stay curious, stay high, stay cool, and I'll see you in the next episode.