I have been wanting to make my own vanilla extract ever since I chanced upon it on baking blogs. You only need vanilla beans, vodka and “time”. Finally got my hands on some beans and vodka recently
Aren’t these vanilla beans gorgeous? Not to mention moist too. I can already imagine the caviar oozing out of them.
There you are. Caviar or seeds. You can make tons of desserts like creme brûlée, panna cotta, homemade vanilla ice cream etc with just the seeds.
Recipe:
10 vanilla beans (I used Madagascar beans as they are the most popular among the varieties)
1L vodka
Make a slit in the beans, leaving about an inch at the ends intact. I used the same vodka bottle, poured out a little bit into another glass bottle to make room for the vanilla beans. Add the beans into the vodka bottle.
Store in a cool, dark and dry place for 1 to 3 months. Give it a shake daily or whenever you feel like it. Once you start using the extract, just top it off with more beans and vodka and let it mature again. That’s like a never ending supply of vanilla extract, awesome!
This is how it looks at the end of week 1.
It looks darker and cloudy at the end of week 2.
Even darker at the end of week 3.
I’ll keep updating how the vanilla extract looks at the end of subsequent weeks.
