How to Make Cannabis Sugar or Powdered Sugar

Features

• Just 2 ingredients needed: a cannabis tincture and sugar
• Shelf-stable once prepared, it last a long time!
• Versatile and can be used the same way other sugar is
• Sugar-free alternatives included!

Why You Will Love This Recipe

Most of my recipe inspiration comes from my Well With Cannabis Community, and somewhere in the early days, I saw someone making cannabis sugar.

I LOVE cannabis sugar because once it's made, it can serve as a staple recipe for infusing all other recipes easily. I also love the versatility.

Once it is made, you can use it in so many different recipes like brownies, chocolate chip cookies, cocktails and drinks, or even a scoop in your morning coffee or tea.

Plus, if you're looking to increase the potency of your cannabis recipes - you can use both a cannabis infused oil AND cannabis sugar together for a double dose of CBD or THC.

Continue reading to learn how to make a delicious cannabis-infused sugar, get my notes and expert tips, and my fully answered FAQs.

Ingredient Notes

• Cannabis Tincture: Before getting started, you're going to want to prepare a cannabis tincture. The Green Dragon and Golden Dragon tinctures are very popular. You must use an alcohol-based tincture for this recipe, oil will not work.
• Sugar: White, granulated sugar is the standard sugar for this recipe. While I have not tried making sugar with anything aside from this, members of my Well With Cannabis Community report having success infusing:

• Brown Sugar
• Cane sugar
• Coconut sugar
• Turbinado Sugar
• Monk Fruit Sweetener
• Erythritol (non-nutritive sugar alcohol)

Members also report NOT having success infusing Splenda or other powdered artificial sweeteners.

Note: a complete list of ingredients with amounts and printable instructions is located in the recipe card below.

The Step-by-Step Process

• Step 1 - Add the sugar to a glass baking dish.
• Step 2 - Pour the tincture over the sugar.
• Step 3 - Stir well.
• Step 4 - Place in a safe area for drying. Cover with breathable fabric.

• Step 5 - Allow the mixture to air dry for 48-72 hours, or until completely dry. Stir every few hours.
• Step 6 - You will know it is ready when it is completely dry and resembles traditional sugar.
• Step 7 - Store in an airtight container.
• Step 8 - Enjoy.

Note: complete step-by-step printable instructions are located in the recipe card below.

Storage Instructions

Once your cannabis sugar is made, you want to ensure you keep it as dry as possible. An airtight mason jar or even a ziplock bag will work as long as it's sealed properly.

The Sugar Making Process Overview

Unfortunately, this is not a quick recipe, there are a few things you need to do before you can get started making infused sugar.

Here's what you need to do first:

1. Decarboxylate your cannabis flower according to the cannabinoid present. You can decarb in an oven or an Instant Pot.
2. Make a cannabis alcohol tincture - either a Green Dragon Tincture or QWET Tincture

Please note:

• You can not make cannabis-infused sugar without the alcohol tincture
• You can not make cannabis sugar with butter, oil, or any other type of fat

Decarboxylate Your Cannabis Flower

Making cannabis edibles involves a bit of science, and there are tried and true processes to follow to get the best quality final product.

Dried cannabis flowers do not naturally contain high amounts of THC or CBD. Instead, they contain high amounts of THCA and CBDA, an acidic, but non-intoxicating, form of the cannabinoids.

Applying heat helps to convert the THCA and CBDA into the active forms of THC and CBD through a process called decarboxylation.

Skipping the decarb process may result in a weaker final product with inactive, or non-intoxicating, effects.

Make An Alcohol-Based Tincture

After the process of decarboxylation comes the process of using alcohol as a solvent to extract the active cannabinoids THC and CBD from the plant matter.

This is the process of making a cannabis tincture, and is essentially the same process as making vanilla extract. You will want to use a high-proof, food grade alcohol like the options listed here.

You can make two types of cannabis tinctures at home, a more traditional long-soak Green dragon tincture or the more modern Golden Dragon QWET tincture method.

Once you have your tincture made, you will pour the tincture directly over the white sugar and stir.

Evaporate All Of The Alcohol

This recipe's outcome is based on the complete evaporation of all alcohol, leaving behind just the extracted cannabis oils bound to the sugar crystals.

It's important to note that there are many different ways to evaporate the alcohol, some are more safe than others.

Please note: it can become dangerous if you decide to use heat or an open flame, so be cautious because alcohol is extremely flammable!

While it may be tempting to use heat to evaporate the alcohol, I think it is safer to let nature take its course and let the alcohol evaporate off naturally, even if the process takes longer.

The process takes a few days, but some things are worth waiting for. If you're impatient, a using a food dehydrator is a great next best option.

If you're even more impatient, be sure to checkout my guide for safe alcohol evaporation before getting started.

Use The Right Dish

Remember with this recipe, the more surface area exposed to the air, the faster the alcohol will evaporate off.

This means you want a bigger container that can have a shallow amount of sugar when filled.

I have used a glass 9x13 inch (3 quart) baking dish in the past and thought it worked perfectly.

I've seen suggestions to put foil or parchment paper on a baking sheet but found this was way too messy, especially when stirring the sugar frequently.

Choose a Breathable Cover

You want as much airflow as possible to the sugar, so you absolutely do not want to put a solid top or a lid on the pan while the sugar is drying or else the alcohol will not be able to evaporate.

But you will likely want to cover the sugar while drying to prevent any contamination, so I suggest a coffee filter or thin piece of cheesecloth over the top.

Find a Safe Drying Space

You will need to leave the glass baking dish out to dry for several days, so you will need a safe drying space where the sugar can rest.

An empty pantry shelf or even on top of the refrigerator works. Ultimately, we chose to keep ours in the oven because we have little ones at home.

This wasn't ideal because the airflow isn't great, but it worked well for keeping it safe and out of the way.

One thing to note, we put a big note on our oven to ensure we did NOT turn it on while the sugar was inside. Again, alcohol = flammable. Please use caution!

Stir Your Sugar Often

The more often you can stir your cannabis sugar, the more you will be exposing the alcohol to the air for it to evaporate.

We used a small silicone spatula to stir the sugar and tried to stir it as often as possible, every few hours, at least 4-5 times per day.

If you do not stir the sugar enough, it will harden together on itself and create a hard chunk of sugar. If this happens, you can use the food processor or a ziplock bag and a rolling pin to break it back up into granules again.

Use A Fan To Speed Up The Process

One option to get the alcohol to evaporate faster is to place a fan over the sugar and allow it to run while stirring the sugar consistently.

This helps move the air and the sugar around, allowing for quicker evaporation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some of the most frequently asked questions I get asked about making cannabis sugar inside my Well With Cannabis Community.

How to Make More Potent Sugar

Everybody always wants the most potent end product, but there are a few things to keep in mind when determining potency.

First, the strength of your cannabis sugar will depend on the strength of the cannabis flower you used to make your alcohol tincture.

Using shake, leaves, and stems will result in a weaker concentration of cannabinoids, while using high-quality cannabis buds will result in a higher concentration of cannabinoids.

Volume matters here, too.

The final concentration will depend on how much herb you use in your tincture.

You can either double your flower or half your alcohol volume here for a stronger tincture. Additionally, you can also simply cut the amount of sugar down in this recipe to 1 cup sugar, 1 cup tincture.

The mixture will be wetter at first and may require more time to evaporate off all of the alcohol.

Of course, your reaction to cannabis edibles is unique and highly dependent on your own unique endocannabinoid system, and you should dose accordingly.

How to Determine The Dosing

Want to get a more accurate guesstimate of the potency of your cannabis infusions and extractions? Try our popular edibles calculator!

Not sure what your perfect dose is? Learn more here.

My Edibles Made Easy Online Cooking Course will teach you how to easily make cannabis edibles and topical recipes at home. This step-by-step video course will teach you how to infuse, extract, and create edibles with many different product types - all from the comfort of your own home.

Learn more and enroll today →