“What do you think?” she asks Ford, who has lit the joint as asked, and is happily puffing away. “When I heard you start talking about math I just checked out,” Ford says. No matter—Lavorato is confidently in charge, and obviously having a good time. It’s that whole vibe that’s made Lavorato one to watch. Many folks know her as the resident culinary expert on Viceland’s Bong Appétit, while San Franciscans and Angelenos fell in love with her as the confectioner behind Marigold Sweets, her line of handcrafted infused chocolates.

  “Meet the chic cannabis chocolatier who will change the way you think about edibles,” Vogue wrote in a glowing profile of Lavorato in 2016. Nowadays you can join her Patreon and hang out with her in her tiny Los Angeles kitchen as she cooks up original edibles recipes and calculates weed math. At least, it feels like you’re hanging out—Lavorato offers a sense of connection and community that’s undoubtedly got a whole bunch of stoners invested in a parasocial relationship with her. There’s also an engagingly subversive streak underneath Lavorato’s sunny charm and Sophia Loren-esque looks.

She tells me that the first strain she ever smoked, Romulan, smacked her in the face. “I was like, this is something, because it scared me a little bit, but I like that,” she laughs. Her interest in edibles was initially piqued when her mom cautioned her by recounting a familiar tale: the pot brownie that got her way too high, for way too long. Lavorato rose to what she interpreted as a challenge by baking an infused apple pie. “And that first edible high, I learned it lasts a lot longer. I remember going to work the next day.

I was so high, it was coming out of my pores.” Her manager sent her home. “It took me a couple of days to get it out of my system,” she says. “I was like, holy… this is very, very, very different from smoking.” She’s unimpressed by people eating huge amounts of THC, however. “That kind of pressure to eat high doses, I hope that goes away, and we have more acceptance that all of our bodies are different. I think this competitive nature of, ‘How much can you smoke? How much can you eat?’ I don’t know, it just feels like part of the patriarchy.

” Her eyes twinkle as she says this, but I get the sense that she’s dead serious. I’m beginning to understand that this is very much her thing: she’s a whole lot of fun, with an academic bent, which makes sense since she graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in art history. After her studies, Lavorato was compelled to marry her love for cooking and cannabis with her talents as a saleswoman, launching Marigold Sweets in 2010 when she was working at a high-end clothing boutique in San Francisco.

She procured cold-water hash from a grower in Humboldt County and started making edibles for the store’s clients, experimenting with caramels and chocolates, teaching herself about decarboxylation and dosing, and hand-making beautiful little origami boxes for her sweets. Word spread like wildfire, and chefs and culinary artists started to take note. “People trusted me ’cause they were like, ‘Her dose is consistent.’ I didn’t have lab testing. I was the Guinea pig,” she laughs. After cementing her reputation as a boutique chocolatier, Lavorato moved to Los Angeles, where she found herself interviewing for Bong Appétit.

“I thought I was being interviewed to be a food stylist, and maybe do a chocolate segment,” she says. “I didn’t know I was being interviewed to be a co-host. I don’t think they knew either.” The producers asked her to do one episode. She ended up in all 40. Since wrapping that series in 2019, Lavorato has often been asked if she’d do another show. And she recently bet on herself to make one, traveling to Thailand in January to film four episodes of her new show Incredible Edibles. In one episode, she meets with a Thai grower who gives his landrace sativa seeds away for free.

“I cooked mackerel curry with him,” Lavorato says. “And we made this mung bean dessert with CBN flower that he’d aged, it was like brown sugar, you know that color? I took a really, really long nap. It was so beautiful.” The series will premiere on The Edibles Club for subscribers, and will eventually be available on YouTube. Lavorato also just sold her first book, titled How to Eat Weed and Have a Good Time. Forthcoming from Simon Element, the cookbook will contain 80 recipes, and judging by the ones available in The Edibles Club, Lavorato will have us covered with sweet and savory concoctions: the marijuana meatball hero, BLTHC popcorn, and hot boxed fudge sundae all sound drool-worthy for any weed-lovin’ gourmand.

Plus, she’s hellbent on demystifying edibles for the home chef with science-backed infusions, which is where her weed math comes into play. I’m delighted to report that when I made her Vegan Baked Banana Cake at home, it was perfectly dosed, and absolutely (chef’s kiss) delicious. Learn more about The Edibles Club and keep an eye out for a holiday drop of Marigold Sweets and other news from Vanessa Lavorato at vanessalavorato.com. Recipe by Vanessa Lavorato Makes 16 pieces Total Time: 1 hour 45 minutes Dose: 12.

5 mg delta-9 THC per piece 1 gram ground flower (about 25% THCA) 2 tablespoons coconut oil 3 medium-sized ripe bananas, plus 1 optional for the top 1/3 cup softened vegan butter (such as Earth Balance) 1 cup granulated sugar 1/3 cup oat milk 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice 1 tablespoon blackstrap molasses 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt 2 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 cup aquafaba To Infuse the Coconut Oil: To Make the Cake: This article was originally published in the November 2023 issue of High Times Magazine. Read less