Vanilla is my all-time favorite ingredient to use whenever I bake or make frostings; you probably have noted that scrolling through my recipes.
Vanilla adds something special to cakes, desserts, and frosting! It has that little "it" factor" that makes your frostings/cakes just a bit more luxurious.
It gives an intense flavor of extract plus the aesthetic beauty of those beautiful caviar flecks in your frostings and cakes.
I soak vanilla pods in Vokda to make them plumper and keep them fresh and to make vanilla extract.
Homemade Vanilla Extract
Whole vanilla beans are a bit pricy; I bought a bundle of 50 Madagascar Organic Bourbon Vanilla Beans to make vanilla extract on Etsy → here for 1/10 of the price I would buy in the supermarket.
Homemade Vanilla Extract
- 15 to 100 whole vanilla beans *note
- 750 gram/ml vodka
Direction for homemade Vanilla extract
- Bakers Note; Whole vanilla beans are a bit pricy; I bought a bundle of 50 Madagascar Organic Bourbon Vanilla Beans to make vanilla extract on Etsy → here for 1/10 of the price I would buy in the supermarket.
- Using 15 whole vanilla beans will give you plenty of vanilla extract, but if you have a bundle of 50 or 100 as I have use them as well.
- Use a large clean jar or bottle with a tight-fitting lid.
- Add 15 to 100 whole vanilla beans to the clean bottle/jar.
- It will make for a better vanilla extract if you cut at least 5 of the vanilla beans down their length to get a better taste and scrape out some of the vanilla seeds. Add the scraped vanilla seeds to the jar as well.
- Pour over the 750 grams/ml of vodka, and seal it.
- Let the sealed bottle/jar sit in a cool, dark place for about two months before using it.
- Each time you use a vanilla bean in your recipe, I also add scraped seedpods to the extracted jar after I´ve used them in my recipes.
- As you use the vanilla extract over time, top off the jar with more of the same type of vodka for a nearly never-ending bottle of vanilla extract.
For step by step pictures of how to make
→ homemade vanilla extract
Click → here