Cannabis on campus: Culinary class teaches students how to bake brownies

CannaBasics is a one-credit culinary arts course that educates students on identifying cannabis plant anatomy, terminology, uses of the plant and research on how to properly infuse cannabis into food. Anyone in the community is welcome to take a class.

According to the Alaska Department of Health, “Personal non-medical marijuana use and possession became legal in Alaska on February 24, 2015.” Six years later, a UAA culinary professor and UAA student worked together to create the class. 

Culinary arts professor Riza Brown taught a hospitality concepts class where former UAA alumna Donna Keryluk founded the idea for CannaBasics. The Northern Light spoke with both program inventors and a current UAA student about the cannabis centered course.

Students in Brown’s class spend the end of the semester inventing and honing a business plan so that they will be prepared to share their ideas to investors after graduation. 

Keryluk is the first certified culinary cannabis chef in Alaska. Her business model for a cannabis cafe was partially inspired by earlier events in her life. 

“When I started in culinary school, I had a stroke, and coming back from that … it (cannabis) helped me to stand up straight and not be dizzy all the time with the vertigo and the nausea and everything that comes with that,” said Keryluk.

Keryluk’s idea involved opening a cannabis bakery as she and her daughter dreamt of opening a cannabis cafe, but Brown and Keryluk had difficulties finding information on culinary cannabis uses while trying to implement the idea.

“And so as we started poking around, we found that it was increasingly difficult to figure out how to create such a business, even though it's fully legal, and you can have a cannabis bakery here in Alaska,” said Brown. 

Finding information about cannabis culinary classes was difficult, but Brown and Keryluk soon found themselves consulting approximately 20 people to help construct the class material. Advisers for the education on cannabis at UAA included professional opinions from chemists and cannabis cultivators.

CannaBasics has two different classes, CannaBasics 1 and CannaBasics 2. CannaBasics 1 was the first class to build a curriculum. It included an overview of cannabis and its revolving subjects such as history, legality, safety, identification, cultivation and cooking processes. 

In CannaBasics 2 — a four-day class — Brown said the course is much more hands-on. Students can choose a recipe from a provided list to have a mock infusion of cannabis, weigh out ingredients and participate in more culinary-centered cannabis infusion. 

The CannaBasics classes teach how to approximate THC dosage and create an edible in class, but actual cannabis buds are not used in the ingredient list. CBD and hemp is federally legal and used as a replacement as no actual cannabis is allowed to be handled on campus grounds.

Brown said that CannaBasics 1 has had less enrollment than previous years possibly due to the stigma surrounding cannabis. 

Alaska has approximately 150 cannabis dispensaries throughout the state and 24 Lower-48 states have legalized recreational cannabis, showing a slow but steady increase in the acceptance of cannabis throughout the country.

But any use of cannabis is still considered federally illegal. Brown said that due to federal illegality, cannabis research in the United States is severely lacking.

“As a culinary arts instructor at the university, this is going to become more and more of an issue. There are people who are going to want to go to school for this to learn how to safely and legally make this product that is legal to sell,” said Brown. 

Brown emphasized that people who consume cannabis for the first time could have an unpleasant experience due to the lack of knowledge on dosage and effects. This situation, in turn, could create the perception that cannabis has negative effects and others should not be consuming the product, furthering the stigma surrounding cannabis. 

Staci Gillilian is a graduate student at UAA who attended the first CannaBasics class in 2021. Gillilian took the class to learn how to cook for people with any type of diet, from gluten free to THC-based.

Gillilian said she had no knowledge on cannabis before attending the class, but left with more knowledge than she expected from the short course.

“It was so educational and done in such a respectful, professional educational way,” said Gillilian.

Everyone who spoke to The Northern Light commented on further applications of cannabis education throughout UAA. Brown and Gillilian highlighted the use of UAA’s chemistry department if they were open to collaboration with the culinary department. 

Culinary students could utilize machines in the chemistry department that could determine dosage in the product.

Keryluk said UA university agriculture departments could grow hemp and students could attempt to create paper or t-shirts for the bookstore. She noted that cannabis could weave its way into every department at UAA.

“Come check us out, see what we're all about. Come and learn and absorb anything and everything about cannabis and leave with a treat,” said Keryluk.