Babinka Treats

Glittered Ganja, Cannabis Cakes and Dank Doughnuts –

Medicine Never Looked So Good!

A doughnut a day keeps the doctor away? While the need for medicinal cannabis research persists, Babinka Treats takes doughnuts and other baked goods to task, delivering compliant cannabinoids and smiles.

Written by Shannon Perkins

Michelle Araneta, a Texas transplant to Los Angeles, officially started Babinka Treats in 2015, though the baking was born as an outlaw. “It was something I would do with my best friend as an annual thing. We made [cannabis-infused] edibles for this 4/20 reggae festival for personal use and for friends,” Araneta explained during a phone interview. “I’m from Texas, so I was making these edibles in Texas,” she said, adding that it was not exactly legal. Spurred by requests, Araneta started to sell small batches to friends during college. After graduation, she was a social worker for four years. “It’s such a depressing job,” recalled Araneta, “I drank more than anything. Every weekend [I] was like, ‘I need a drink.’ I would wake up in the morning hating my job, and at 29 [years old], I was thinking, I shouldn’t be feeling like this. Something inside of me said, ‘Go ahead. Quit your job. Move to LA.’ ”

After Araneta dedicated years of college and career to social work, her mother responded to the cannabis career change with, “Follow your dreams!”

So, Araneta packed up and made her move to the City of Angels.

Originally, Babinka Treats were made with cannabis-infused butter which Araneta made herself in a lengthy process, followed by the baking and decorating phase. Now she infuses coconut oil with San Fernando Valley (SFV OG) as shatter from Sticky Fingers Caregivers, a Southern California cannabis collective. Sticky Fingers Caregivers create concentrates from their own harvest of organic, sun-grown cannabis plants. With Shatter’s 80 percent cannabinoid content, it has a higher potency than cannabis flowers which, when smoked, carry 5 percent to 18 percent cannabinoid content, according to Yasmin Tayag in the Huffington Post article “What Is ‘Shatter’ Weed and Is It the Future of Marijuana?”      

In a 2017 paper from the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) entitled “Tasty THC: Promises and Challenges of Cannabis Edibles,” the collection of authors concur that reliable clinical studies on the medicinal or healing effectiveness of cannabis and its components are sparse or nonexistent, largely due to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) classification of cannabis as a Schedule I drug, defined as having “no medical use.”  The paper goes on to project that the momentum of cannabis legalization at the state level “for medicinal or recreational purposes may serve as an impetus for funding additional high-quality studies on the effects of cannabis on health and in treatment of disease.”

Until these studies are conducted, and results released, one way to see whether Babinka Treats edibles work for you is to treat yourself to one … or more! Babinka Treats edibles range in potency, custom fit for each order. Whether it’s 100 mini doughnuts with 5 mg of THC in each or one, truly unique, glitter unicorn birthday cake with 500 mg, the high is reliable. Friendly reminder: Consume responsibly! Start small, even with mini-sized treats. These potent edibles are accurately measured. Even the 5 mg mini doughnuts and cookies may leave the most experienced of cannabis foodies feeling happily high. Babinka’s non-medicated treats are worth mentioning, and devouring, for the non-cannabis treat-lovers. There’s something special about these tiny Babinka Treats doughnuts, with or without the weed.

Araneta’s skills put Babinka Treats at top-shelf quality; every baked goody looks and tastes delicious and dank. With Babinka Treats, cannabis cookies taste like cookies, not chlorophyll. The idea for infused doughnuts started in none other than a doughnut shop itself!

“I would go to California Doughnuts in Koreatown and stand in line thinking, ‘Man, these doughnuts are so awesome. They should make these medicated…’ and that’s when the light bulb went on,” recalled Araneta. When asked about how legalization has affected Babinka Treats as a business, Araneta explained, “It hasn’t really slowed me down, but it has given me obstacles as far as not being able to get into as many shops as I would like.”

As Babinka Treats continues to navigate the ever-evolving world of legal cannabis in California, wild dreams fold into realistic goals. “I want to open a little Babinka bakery, where people can come in and pick non-medicated [and] medicated [treats]. If someone places a custom order or cake order, I don’t have to meet them at a coffee shop, I can meet them at my bakery.”

Babinka Treats can be found in select Southern California dispensaries, at social Cannabis Events, on Facebook and Instagram and via e-mail: BabinkaTreats@yahoo.com.