TV’s Best Baking Show Got Me High

This article originally appeared in Danish on MUNCHIES DA.

Denmark's version of The Great British Bake Off is one of the most conformist and innocuous programs on TV. The show is full of cake-related emotions, hosts who attempt to hug everyone (like you're supposed to on TV), and judges who have taken an advanced degree in being stern. Contestants seriously start crying because their mousse hasn't settled. And I love it!

The Bake Off tent is full of cream and fondant while the butter merrily melts to the sound of the theme song, but I always felt the whole thing would be a lot more entertaining if the contestants and the judges were stoned. Imagine the cake orgy they could have.

Unfortunately I wasn't allowed on the actual show here in Denmark, so I decided to make my own version. When you watch it on TV it doesn't appear all that hard to put together a batch of profiteroles, so I wanted to challenge myself further. I decided to recreate four of the secret, technical challenges from the current season of the Danish version, adding an extra ingredient to each recipe: ganja.

Although several states and countries, and most people with even a bit of intellect, have long since realized that cannabis prohibition is an anachronism on par with fossil fuels and monarchy, the legal status of the plant in Denmark forced me to cook it up elsewhere. So I flew to Amsterdam to live out my baking dreams.

I booked an apartment on the outskirts of the city. The kitchen looked fine, though it wasn't as well equipped as the tent on TV—the only knife in the house was a hunting dagger. But I had four culinary masterworks to perfect, so I had to get going.

My first project was to make cannabutter, which I needed for two of the cakes. Cannabutter is probably the simplest method if you want to get high from your food. You melt the butter, add your weed, and let it simmer on low heat—preferably for a couple of hours. If you can get hold of a cheesecloth it is a good idea to leave the pot in big chunks and strain the mixture afterwards, once all the THC is extracted and swims around in the butter. I couldn't find any cheesecloth, so instead I ground the pot to a fine powder.

I chose a gram of Maui Skunk and a bit of Cheese Promo. It wasn't enough to get completely fucked because the butter was to be used in portions so big that you had to eat ridiculous amounts of cake to really feel it. And no one is capable of eating an entire croquembouche.

I ground up the rest of the Cheese Promo, which, according to the coffeeshop dealer in Amsterdam, was particularly good for savory dishes, and gave it five minutes in the oven in a process called decarboxylation. It is a particularly good idea if you use weed in dishes that are only lightly heated. If you don't decarboxylate your cannabis you wont achieve the full THC potential. Obviously, that's not dangerous, but it is a bit of waste if you were expecting to get completely baked and only feel a slight buzz.

I mixed the decarboxylated pot with dried basil and oregano to create a trinity of green to spice up my tomato sauce for my first dish on the list: breadsticks with bacon and chili. What the dishes have in common is that I've never tried making any of them, but breadsticks, after all, seem so simple that they don't really present a challenge. But the "passion towers"—built from passion fruit mousse and marzipan—surely do.

It is one thing to make a good mousse that stands on its own, but the whole thing only becomes better when you add ganja. I let the weed infuse with cream in a pot for an hour and a half, which I hoped would be enough to release the stoner molecules.

As with the cannabutter, it is important to stir occasionally so the small bits of plant don't stick and burn on the bottom of the pot. If you want the blend completely clean you can filter the whole thing through some cheesecloth, but the tiny bits of green gives the cream a nice texture and are full of fiber, so I left them in. True nerds might disagree.

While the cream was simmering I took out the breadsticks. I ate one while they were steaming hot and had to sit down to handle it. It tasted great.

Due to the heating process and the small bits of herb, I wasn't able to whip the cream as stiff as usual, but gelatin would be enough to make it stand on its own. I folded an additional deciliter of whipped cream in to make the mousse airier, but followed the instructions of the judges in all other respects. I didn't dare do anything else.

When I poured the cream into the mold it had achieved a beautiful light green color with dark green dots. It smelled of passion fruit mixed with the slight whiff of pot, but the whole thing looked too runny. Would the towers just implode when I removed the cake ribbon? Would it all end in tears?

Fortunately the cakes looked like towers when they came out of the freezer—they looked sharp. So did the little that went on top as ornaments. I decorated the plates with sliced Dutch strawberries and chopped pistachios, before promptly grabbing a spoon and destroying the whole arrangement. It was light and fluffy, and the sharp taste of the passion fruit was a perfect match for the somewhat heavy weed flavor.

Knocked over by the sugar and weed buzz, I kneaded a dough and left it in the fridge to rise. Bread in the morning would do me good.

I woke up with a song stuck in my head: "Because You Love Me" by Celine Dion. Clearly all that weed wasn't good for me. I poured a cup of piping hot coffee and opened the fridge—I was really excited to see how my cannabutter was doing. It had achieved a funny crumbling texture and a cheesy smell, which might be ascribed to the Cheese Promo. I spread a little on the freshly baked bread and ate it with fried mushrooms and bacon.

The first challenge of the day was a Danish classic, flødeboller, which is a type of chocolate-covered marshmallow on a biscuit base. But since this was Bake Off, it was never going to be simple. The base was not a crispy waffle like the ones from the supermarket, but rather a type of cookie with chocolate bits and cannabutter. Thanks to the lack of kitchen utensils, I had to use an empty beer bottle as a rolling pin and a wine glass as a cutter.

For the filling, the recipe called for obscure ingredients such as freeze-dried raspberries and blackcurrant powder, so I had to improvise. I opted for a blended fresh blueberries, but the liquid from the berries made the filling loose some of its texture. The egg whites were beat so hard that the filling was as stiff as a sailor's dick, but the whole thing became a bit more flaccid after the berries were added. Squirting out the mixture was further complicated because I hadn't let the base cool sufficiently, but most of the little cakes were standing tall. After a while I poured the tempered white chocolate over them and sprinkled pistachios.

While the flødeboller were setting, I started preparations for the biggest challenge of them all: croquembouche. I felt substantial fear from the prospect of tackling this decadent French classic, where profiteroles filled with custard are stacked in a conical tower.

The choux pastry for the profiteroles was quite simple, but I had to make 200, so I ended up getting cramps in my right arm from squirting out the diminutive cakes. I used the rest of the cannabutter for this recipe, and a delicious aroma filled my kitchen each time a baking tray left the oven.

As soon as the Dutch photographer had photographed the cakes I had made the previous day, he started eating them. While I cooked the citrus custard filing for the profiteroles, he was chilling on the couch. After a while he cleared his throat.

"Kristian, I think I feel something," he said, grinning. I figured it was placebo, because I really didn't put that much weed in, and he only ate three or four breadsticks and a passion tower. I had devoured the rest.

But an hour later—as he got up to photograph me filling 200 profiteroles—I could tell by his eyes that he was pretty high. We had a great time.

I kept walking around the kitchen, moving stuff around aimlessly. I was procrastinating because I dreaded the next step: cooking caramel and constructing my croquembouche tower.

It took forever before the caramel finally reached the precise temperature of 152 degrees Celsius. I built the tower around the cone I had made from a door stop, which happened to have the right shape, and baking paper. I moved quickly and it was easier than I had feared. I had to re-boil the caramel several times, but during the second attempt the thermometer broke from the heat.

After that I had to guess the right temperature, but against all odds I succeeded. The tower was standing. I had built a fucking croquembouche avec beuh!

I was so proud and high.

After a couple of hours of watching Futurama and snacking on caramelized profiteroles until I should feel ashamed, I went into the kitchen. I suddenly realized that I wasn't actually a contestant on The Great Bake Off. Dirty dishes littered the whole kitchen. I sighed. I was absolutely too fucked to do anything about it.

On the dinner table stood my cake tower and a myriad of beautiful chocolate-covered goodies, and I wished the judges from the show would come by to praise me.

With a goofy smile on my face, I felt I deserved it.