Portland-based Hapy Kitchen is an artisan cannabis edibles company specializing in baked goods, caramels, chocolate bars, and an assortment of fruit pastilles, hard candies, and flavored tinctures. Its award-winning line of confections includes an extra gooey brownie, a toffee freckled brown sugar blondie, and a strain-specific chocolate cookie that features Blue Dream Hash Rosin — all three of which I had the pleasure of testing during a recent trip that included a wig wardrobe, a perpetually wet fleabag motel, and a funeral where several people nearly fell into the fresh grave of my last deceased grandparent.
Hapy Kitchen is a familiar brand in Oregon with a range of edibles that appeal to not just recreational consumers, but also folks who require consistent, manageable doses of cannabis for therapeutic necessities. Though the brand’s POV is framed in frivolity — its slogan, “laughter is the best medicine,” being the most obvious example — Hapy Kitchen’s focus is aimed at the normalization of therapeutic cannabis through recreational means.
After reading through Hapy Kitchen consumers’ personal stories, admiring its several awards, and considering my own optimal usage, I packed the brownie, blondie, and chocolate cookie, each with 50 milligrams of THC, for a 48-hour trip to my home state, where comfort, focus, and a potent anxiety relief were going to be big requirements. During my trip, I attended my grandmother’s funeral, mingled with my caucasian cousins, and dodged cat ghosts at a vermin-ridden hotel.
First impressions
Hapy Kitchen’s branding is straightforward, with fonts and packages that are across-the-board cohesive. Edibles arrive in medium-small, glossy bags emblazoned with a minimalist, line-art leaf emblem and a plain description of the bag’s contents. In this regard, Hapy Kitchen edibles are discreet enough to toss into a handbag or slip into a jacket pocket, with an aesthetic that is as cozy on a dispensary shelf as it might be in a boutique or premium-grocery setting.
Even though Hapy Kitchen’s products are clearly labeled as “cannabis edibles,” and the bags open from a child-safe ziplock, somehow ripping one open in public doesn’t feel at all like a Stoner Alert moment. Even the faint cannabis smell that emanates from the open packages is hardly attention-grabbing. Bags can be resealed for portioned doses, and at 50 milligrams of THC per package, the products can be easily shared between two or even three people.
Hapy Kitchen Chocolate Supreme Cookie
I’m already a fan of all things chocolate, but that doesn’t mean my bar for edibles is low. I appreciate the quick-fix indulgence of a ding-dong just as much as the opulence of a finely crafted patisserie. Suffice to say, Hapy Kitchen’s Chocolate Supreme Cookie satisfied the spectrum of chocolate fantasies between those two poles.
Winner of the 2021 CannaChef Edibles Cup, this cookie has the fragile give of a bake sale delicacy with a light, airy crumb and a super buttery finish. The flavor is dominated by rich, semi-sweet cocoa, scattered with chunks of white and dark chocolate. In a denser batter, these flavors might be cloying, especially when perfumed with grassy Blue Dream, but in this confection, the lightness of the mix presents a perfect balance between textures and flavors.
I was an hour early for my flight, and based on my brick-wall tolerance, I felt confident consuming the whole 50-milligram cookie in one sitting. My assumption was pretty accurate. The high arrived approximately 45 minutes after ingestion and about 15 minutes before my flight was set to board. The onset was a heart-lifting, transformative swoon that, while intoxicating for sure, was also very manageable. My pre-flight jitters evaporated as the anxious sketches I’d been depositing in my sketchbook mutated into a flowery pastiche of font work repeating the phrase “I’m so high.”
Before I knew it, I was on the plane and in my seat without incident, anxiety, or stoney stumbling. By the time the three-hour flight was complete, the high had all but dissolved, leaving behind an unflappably mellow disposition that made the hotel check-in process perhaps too tolerable. My hotel room had a permanent wet patch on the carpet, I caught three fleabites to the ankles immediately after crossing the threshold, and I could definitely hear a cat mewing beyond the walls, but there was also a burger spot in the parking lot and I was still vibing hard enough to look past the crummier features of my room in favor of hot-fresh-munchie-satisfying burgers. And, damn, they were delicious.
Hapy Kitchen Brownie
The next day of my trip, I pinned on my official funeral wig and traveled 100 miles south, where I would spend the day with my family celebrating the life of my 103-year-old grandmother who had recently passed. I ate a Hapy Kitchen Brownie alongside my travelers’ breakfast of coffee and a banana, and activation happened approximately 45 minutes later while I stood at my grandmother’s graveside. The anxiety, depression, and syrupy malaise that had colored my morning liquified and dribbled away as the onset began to swell.
I stood next to my father as he gazed into his mother’s coffin, and instead of entangling myself in the despair of loss, I felt present in the moment. I felt the warm October sun on my face cooled by the stiff breeze of fall. I felt the soft ground buckle under my funeral pumps, I listened to sweet whistles and trills of the songbirds that decorated the branches of the dry jacaranda trees surrounding us, and when my father’s footing betrayed him, I grasped and steadied him. That stumble caused a domino effect that nearly plunged all my aunties into a fresh grave. Instead of gasping, I laughed. And soon, we were all laughing, which, I think, is precisely what my grandmother would have wanted.
By the end of the service, the more iridescent features of the high had dulled, but I still felt a grateful kind of euphoria. Chatting with cousins I hadn’t seen in years felt easy rather than laborious, and pouring over old family photos elicited joy rather than bittersweet grief. By the time the brownie had exhausted itself completely, I felt complacent enough to bid farewell to my grandmother’s physical form, snug in the knowledge that she had graduated from matriarch to spirit guide just in time to have a good ghost laugh when her family nearly fell into her grave.
Hapy Kitchen Brown Sugar Blondie
I bookended the whole 48-hour funereal whirlwind with Hapy Kitchen’s Brown Sugar Blondie. My expectations were etched somewhere between the anxiety-tamping effects of the Chocolate Supreme Cookie and the bright euphoria of the brownie. Emotionally, I was hoping for some grief relief that didn’t numb me but allowed me to experience my melancholy without burying it under unmanageable effects.
Similar to the other baked goods on this list, the blondie’s activation arrived approximately 45 minutes after ingestion. The familiar, swooning onset and visible brightening of my surroundings felt like a necessary comfort, but rather than a psychotropic free fall, my emotions were pulled into tight focus. These effects, through my lens, were much more introspective and philosophical than the highs I experienced with the brownie and the cookie, but this likely speaks more to the responsiveness of the Hapy Kitchen lineup rather than the starkly different effects they may or may not deliver.
For the better part of an afternoon, I was able to maintain a meditative calm, and within that calm, I was able to process grief in a way that felt healthy and accomplished. As the day wound itself down and the high floated away, I was left with a sweet complacency, percolating munchies, and, eventually, a restorative night of sleep.
Bottom line
When I needed deep pre-travel dissociation, Hapy Kitchen delivered. When I needed to find euphoria in the face of grief, Hapy Kitchen delivered. When I needed to take a trip through my own emotional processes and do some necessary organization, Hapy Kitchen delivered.
Hapy Kitchen has made a foundational practice of promoting the voices of its therapeutic consumers, and after a weekend of therapeutic use, I also feel confident recommending Hapy Kitchen in that regard. Not only does this brand deliver all manner of recreational fun, but it may also help consumers use cannabis to navigate traumatic events, including, but not limited to, funerals where the whole family almost falls into the grave.
Featured image courtesy of Hapy Kitchen
