foodz: 2 (vanilla extract)

Bessie and I do a lot of baking (which I am sure comes as no surprise, based on the interminable cooking posts). This means we tend to use a good deal of vanilla extract.

Several times I’d read on ask.metafilter.com (as I have said before – my source for everything, so worth the $5 sign-up fee) that one could make vanilla extract with very simple ingredients.

I know! Who knew?

I’d been planning to give this a go for a while and decided now was time to carpe the diem. So, this afternoon, armed with supplies:


cheap vodka | vanilla beans | air-tight bottle ($2)

And a recipe from simply recipes, I began the extremely arduous vanilla extract preparation process:

And in less than 5 minutes it was bottled and ready for storage (in a dark place).

I’ll report back in two months and see how it compares with the queen version, which is our usual pantry staple.

I think the best part of this (if it works) is that you can keep topping the bottle up with vodka indefinitely!

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ZOMG! I just clicked on one of the links in the recipe and found beanilla. I want to buy everything there! (I’ll bet shipping is about $87 billion).

<edited to add> I was close, shipping is insane. Damn you antipodes!

4 thoughts on “foodz: 2 (vanilla extract)

    • Thanks Amy! (and if I might get all fan-girly for a second … I love your blog!)

      I have an additional tiny bottle & some vanilla pods laying about from the first experiment, so may give one of those a bash in the next day or so and compare all three.

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