From that Straight Dope link:
Gysin came up with "Haschich Fudge, which anyone could whip up on a rainy day." By way of introduction he gushed, "This is the food of Paradise.... it might provide an entertaining refreshment for a Ladies' Bridge Club or a chapter meeting of the DAR.... Euphoria and brilliant storms of laughter; ecstatic reveries and extensions of one's personality on several simultaneous planes are to be complacently expected. Almost anything Saint Theresa did, you can do better." The active ingredient in the fudge was what Gysin called "canibus sativa," more familiarly known as marijuana.Ahem. I've knocked off work for a week and have some time, finally, to do more than just click through the links and throw in the occasional comment. This is a true story from my far distant youth. I think I was 16 or 17 at the time.
My friend's parents were away for a week and were due to return on the Sunday. On the Saturday we came into the possession of some very fine hash - a block of it, well beyond our means. It was a present and very much appreciated since we'd drunk everything alcoholic in my friend's parents' booze cabinet long since and were already fearing the repercussions of that.
Since we were tyros at the dope game, we asked around. What do you do with a block of hash? We got replies which ranged from "chew little bits of it", through "crumble it into smoking tobacco and smoke it", to "bake a hash cake". We tried the first as a quick, cheap and easy route to nirvana, but although we got a bit of a buzz on, it didn't seem too efficacious. Neither of us smoked at the time, and buying the makings to roll our own smokes would have aroused foul and
completely unfounded suspicions in the breasts of the local shopkeepers. This was something to be avoided at all costs since they were as likely to snitch on us to our parents as not.
That left option 3: Bake a hash cake. Of one thing you can be certain. Two 16-year-olds in 1970s Zild were
not going to be experienced bakers of high quality cakes. After peering through various recipe books for ten minutes or so, one of us had the brilliant idea of buying one of those "shake'n'bake" cake mixes, just add some liquid, a couple of eggs and ... bake. Oh, joyous memory! We swiftly repaired to the local supermarket (or whatever it was in those days) and acquired, after some earnest debate over the merits of the various flavours available, a packet of orange cake mix. I can see the packet in my mind's eye to this day, "Mrs Crocker's Cake Mix", a reddish packet with yellow writing. Young minds are indeed impressionable!
Back in my friend's kitchen we swiftly whipped up the mixture, following the recipe on the back of the packet to the letter. I remember there was a mild panic when we couldn't find what we considered to be the appropriate container to bake the cake in, but we obviously resolved that. Then we realised that we didn't actually know the best way to put the hash into the mix. Should we grate it? Should we crumble it? Should we just kinda press it flat and put it in the middle? A phone call later, we decided on a thoroughly unscientific crumbling programme followed by a further frantic mixing session in the Kenwood cake mixer.
Finally, the concoction went into the oven. Twenty minutes later (I may be wrong about the timing here) we had an orange hash cake. It even
looked right, and we were so deliriously happy with the result that we decided to go the whole hog and ice it. This sent us back to the recipe books, the local shop and took another two hours or so. Finally, on the kitchen counter we had our creation. An orange cake with what would have been, in today's terms, a
shitload of hash in it. Distributed crumb by crumb, I reckon that cake would have kept most of Somalia hungry for a week, but
very happy about it. With icing, yet.
And, just as we were about to slice it up and hog in, the unthinkable happened. My friend's parents, they-who-were-not-supposed-to-be-home-until-the-morrow arrived ... home.
What to do? we panicked before they'd actually made it inside. Hide it? Well, probably we could, but the smell in the house would have been a dead giveaway. Eat it? Not really possible in the time available, a matter of seconds. Act cool? Now, that appealed to a couple of 1970s teenagers. Besides, there wasn't much choice, was there?
The cake was exclaimed over, and its existence somewhat blunted the wrath of my friend's father when he realised that we'd drunk all his booze. Mum cooked tea, and we left the cake for "afters". So there we were, sitting the lounge in front of the telly with dinky little cake plates, some wine which could easily have been confused with anti-freeze and ... hash cake.
My friend and I nibbled gingerly, not knowing what the effects would be, really. As I said, we were tyros. Mum and Dad hoed in like there was no tomorrow. Liked it, complimented us and had second pieces. Well, what the hell, we thought, and we got stuck in as well.
The rest of the evening was a little hazy. I know I spent the night on the couch and my friend on an easy chair. Mum and Dad got silly and giggly and disappeared before 10 to go to bed ... I had very pleasant dreams, I can tell you!
Anyway, as friendships brought about by proximity and little else often do, my friend and I drifted apart. But from that day on, I called him "Dook" after the Duke of Orange. Later, he married and moved to another city. I was in that city some ten years later and decided to call in on him. When he answered the door, I said "Hi Dook," and he dissolved into laughter - he remembered the whole episode as vividly as I did. Except for the end bit...
