Creativity is a requirement if you want to survive in Miami’s dessert game. Taiyaki Miami is luring Instagram-hungry customers with adorable fish cones and unicorn floats. St. Roch Market stuffs its vegan matcha soft-serve into a little coconut and over in the Design District Soraya Kilgore is treating her sweets like small-scale science experiments at MadLab Creamery.
Not to be left behind, local Miami baker Courtney Kohout of Courtney’s Cookies has something up her sleeve: two special CBD-infused cookies, the “Chill Out” and “Nighty Night.”
“We wanted to infuse our cookies with CBD because it perfectly aligns with our core values around health and wellness,” says Kohout. “I definitely feel the effects from both our Chill Out (25mg CBD) and Nighty Night (50mg CBD; 3mg melatonin) cookies. They do exactly what their names suggest.”
CBD has become a darling of the growing wellness industry, a soon to be billion dollar industry by some estimates. Like most buzzy remedies without an extensive body of scientific studies under its belt, CBD is attributed to providing relief from a whole host of things. There is some good evidence that forms of CBD can actually help treat epileptic seizures. Others claim it has helped treat chronic pain, anxiety, insomnia and nausea among other things.
CBD isn’t as mysterious as it sounds. Also known as cannabidiol, it’s one of many compounds found in the cannabis plant, which is why folks often lump it in with marijuana. It’s certainly not, though. CBD does not induce any of the psychoactive effects we normally associate with smoking weed. This is because, while both are found in the cannabis plant, CBD and THC (the stuff that makes you feel funky) are separate compounds. CBD is legal in Florida now that we (technically) have medical marijuana.
Yesterday, I tried one of Courtney’s Chill Out cookies. I popped the vegan, gluten-free cookie into my mouth around noon as my slightly nervous editor looked on, wondering what sort of bizarre content was about to come from my keyboard. The cookie was quite tasty—moist, soft and sweet without giving me a jumpy sugar rush. After about 25 minutes, the Chill Out began to do its job. CBD effects everyone differently and placebo is always a possibility, but I’ll be darned if a slight euphoria didn’t wash over me, helping ease the usual stress of a Monday afternoon—plus the added stress of trying to book an appointment for my in-heat kitten, Potato, to be spayed. It was a cozy sensation. I felt a bit like I was being hugged from the inside by a polite creature made of blankets. I suspect I had a dumb look on my face, though it’s hard to say if that is cookie-related or not.
I don’t know many desserts that can do that and still taste good. I certainly plan on having another of Courtney’s Cookies next time I find myself in the all-too-common ven diagram of hunger and anxiety, which, now that I think about it, seems to happen to me quite often. Oh, man. I think I need another cookie.
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