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<figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="https://buzz-caribbean.com/app/uploads/2019/08/Wake-Bake-Cafe-B-20190823-1024x686.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-5650" /><figcaption>Karen McLeod (left) serves a German tourist, who travelled with his friends from his hotel to the cafe to buy ganja brownies. (Photos: Contributed)</figcaption></figure>
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<p>The Wake N Bake Café at the CanJam Retreat has been keeping ‘heads high’ in Negril’s West End for the past few years. </p>
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<p>The prominently
displayed, chalk-written sign at the front of the café is hard to miss. “Ganja
cookies, ganja brownies, ganja popcorn, ganja milkshake,” the sign reads. </p>
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<p>The café, which is
open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., is as immaculate as it is inviting with hilarious
signs inside and outside of the building. And it is as Jamaican as it gets with
a strong Rastafari influence. It is the brainchild of Karen McLeod, a Canadian
woman who has made Jamaica her adopted home, after falling in love with the
island the first day she set foot on its shores in 2010.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="https://buzz-caribbean.com/app/uploads/2019/08/Wake-Bake-Cafe-A-20190823.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-5651" /><figcaption>The Wake N Bake Cafe offers a wide range of snacks made from ganja. </figcaption></figure>
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<p>McLeod has been cooking
with cannabis in Canada for years, having worked in the catering business since
she was an adolescent.&nbsp;However, she first made pastries from ganja while in
Jamaica during her second visit to the island. That visit lasted for 12 weeks
at a condo at Point Village, and during that time she explored the beaches, ate
ton-loads of Jamaican fruits and interacted with scores of Jamaicans. </p>
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<p>“I had a couple
edibles and said: ‘this doesn’t cut it’. And I gathered everything I needed to
make my canna-butter.&nbsp;I used to make cannabis butter, so I figured out a
way to make some of that butter from real dairy butter and weed.&nbsp;You
infuse butter with it and then you bake with the butter,” she explained. </p>
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<p>She said that she made a batch of the canna-butter and cookies and borrowed other necessary items from a Rastaman she had met.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="https://buzz-caribbean.com/app/uploads/2019/08/Wake-Bake-Cafe-C-20190823-1024x686.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-5652" /><figcaption>Karen McLeod (right) and her assistant Clifford Peters (second right) show off ganja popcorn to these German tourists. </figcaption></figure>
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<p>After returning the
items, she also left some of the pastries for the man who wasn’t there at the time.
“When I went back and was coming down the beach, he saw me coming and he
started jumping up and down, and he said: ‘you are the best since Miss Jenny’.
I knew I was on to something when I impressed a Jamaican.”</p>
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<p>McLeod then began
making cookies which persons would resell on the beach. She would later offer
other types of food. </p>
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<p>“All the time I have chocolate brownies, coconut cake, ginger cookies, popcorn and milkshakes. If people come and would like some ganja tea, we will make it for them,” she said.</p>
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