Got munchies?

A year ago, Jessie Baker was teaching high-school math. That is, until she was diagnosed with diverticulitis, which led to a couple of surgeries and stays in the hospital. This was when Jessie—her real last name isn’t Baker—began nibbling regularly on marijuana cookies, Comatose Chocolate Chip Cookies, in fact, which she’d made at home and her husband had brought to her.

“And that was the real truth for me,” she remembered. “It was a lot more effective than smoking, it lasted longer and it was more of a body effect.”

Today, Jessie is owner and head baker at Ganja Goodies. She started baking pot at first just for friends during spring break last year. Currently, you can find her Ganja Goodies at such dispensaries as El Camino Wellness Center, Unity Non Profit Collective, One Solution and many other spots.

But unlike most edibles, Jessie has applied her smarts to pot treats. “I’ve taken my math background and perfected every ingredient,” she explained, noting that you can eat Ganja Goodies products and trust that every dose will be the same each time. In fact, the number of grams of cannabis butter used to make, say, her Snickers bars or Whoopie Pie, are listed on the packaging.

And soon, she’ll also have nutritional-info labels—carbs and sugar and fats—on her products as well.

“My four dose and your four dose could be different,” she reminded.

Jessie learned how to bake from her mom. “The Kitchen Aid I used to start the business is the one I got from my mom that she bought when she was pregnant with me,” she shared. Her home kitchen is an industrial workspace with a rolling-rack oven, a tidy workplace that would certainly meet most health and cleanliness standards.

Still, Jessie says there needs to be regulation of pot snacks. “You don’t know what the dosage is sometimes,” she explained, “and you don’t know where they’re baking it.” Plus, a lot of bakers use hash, which Jessie refuses to cook with; instead, she uses top-shelf buds, never leftover shake.

And she even bakes sugar-free options. “My husband’s dad, who has diabetes, is also a qualified patient, so I give him my sugar-free stuff to test for me,” she said.

Jessie’s goal is to one day open a cannabis cafe, such as in Amsterdam—if the city of Sacramento ever allows such a business to exist. In the meantime, she plans to forgo returning to school and keep on getting her bake on.