A dinner party is a dinner party. You drink wine, enjoy the charcuterie board and eat whatever fancy dish your hosts prepare before leaving at a sensible hour to avoid overstaying your welcome. Don’t get me wrong — dinner parties can be unbelievably fun, but most tend to look like variations on the exact same evening.
It makes sense that you want to do something special for your next dinner party, and we have just the suggestion: cannabis. As long as you get your guests go-ahead, you can imbue a few of your dishes and drinks with cannabinoid magic, to give the affair an exciting feel. You don’t have to give your guests the typical magic brownie, either; here are a few elevated recipes to keep your party high-class and definitely dank.
Cannabis Cocktails
If you are planning on serving alcohol alongside weed at your dinner party, you might as well combine the two into one interesting cocktail. You can find a few products at your favorite Chicago dispensary that make dosing alcoholic drinks easy, like pre-made tinctures and an innovative substance called ALT, or you can craft your own creations.
For a sophisticated social event, you might opt for this weedtini, which requires you to infuse your own gin with weed a couple weeks in advance:
- 2.5 oz weed gin
- 0.5 oz dry vermouth
- 1 dash orange bitters
- Lemon twist or cannabis leaf garnish
Add all ingredients except garnish into a mixing glass, and fill with ice. Stir until cold, and strain into a chilled martini glass. Add garnish for flair.
If you want to offer your guests a more exotic cannabis cocktail — or one with a bit more flavor — you might consider a weed chapulin, which uses weed-infused tequila and mezcal, infused the same way you would infuse gin. Here’s the process for making a magic chapulin:
- Handful of cilantro, muddled
- 1/2 oz agave nectar
- 1/2 oz lime and/or grapefruit juice
- 1/2 oz weed tequila
- 1/2 oz weed mezcal
Combine all ingredients together in a tumbler, and fill with ice. Shake until chilled, strain, and serve.
Bruschetta
One of the easiest and most crowd-pleasing appetizers at any dinner party is bruschetta, which is nothing more or less than tiny toasts with delicious toppings. There are a few ways to give bruschetta a cannabis kick, from toasting the bread in the oven with cannabutter to drizzling cannabis-infused olive oil on top. This gives you much more freedom when it comes to what you place atop your crostini.
If you are overwhelmed by the endless options of bruschetta toppings, you can’t go wrong with the original: tomato, basil and mozzarella. Here’s what you need to complete this simple recipe:
- 6 Roma tomatoes, diced
- 1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes, diced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
- 1/4 cup fresh basil, stems removed
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp pepper
- 1 baguette
- 2 cup mozzarella cheese, shredded
- 24 tsp cannabutter
Combine everything but the baguette, mozzarella and cannabutter in a large bowl. Allow the mixture to sit for 10 minutes. Cut the baguette into 3/4-inch slices, and arrange the slices on a baking sheet in a single layer. Broil in oven for 1 to 2 minutes. Spread 1 tsp cannabutter on every baguette slice, and divide the tomato mixture evenly over the slices, topping with mozzarella. Broil for 5 minutes, and serve.
Crème Brulee
While you absolutely can serve multiple dinner party courses imbued with cannabis, it isn’t necessarily a good idea to give guests such significant doses of THC. We recommend laying off the cannabinoids for your entrée and then finishing the night with a light, sweet edible. The brilliance of this plan is that you can purchase your dosed dessert from your local dispensary, which eliminates some of the stress of dinner party preparation. However, if you like to do things the hard way, here is a recipe for cannabis crème brulee:
- 1 cup unsweetened coconut milk
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1 teaspoon imitation coconut extract
- 2 Tbsp cannabis-infused coconut oil
- 4 large eggs
- 8 to 9 Tbsp sugar, divided
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. In a small saucepan over medium-high heat, combine the coconut milk, cream and coconut extract; remove from heat as soon as the mixture boils. Add the cannabis coconut oil. In another bowl, whisk together the eggs and 5 Tbsp sugar. Slowly add the heated cream mixture to the eggs, stirring constantly. Divide the mixture into coffee mugs or oven-safe ramekins, filling them 3/4 full. Place the containers on a baking dish and add warm water to the dish to cover the bottom half of the containers. Bake 10 minutes for every 1/2 inch of height of your container, or until the center is nearly set. Remove from oven and allow to cool until completely set, and then refrigerate. Sprinkle tops with remaining sugar and brulee by heating beneath the oven’s broiler for 2 to 3 minutes.
Try any or all of these recipes at your next dinner party and prepare to be the talk of the town!