July 24, 2013

Homemade Vanilla Extract




I moved to a country that up until a few months ago had zero vanilla extract. And now only has tiny 20 ml bottles artificial Vanillin for 2 €. With the amount of baking and desserts that are made in this house, this was becoming ridiculous and I wasn't very happy using the artificial stuff. So imagine how happy I was when Pinterest was showing this post.

So here is what I did:

I snuck into my husbands liquor cabinet and nicked his best vodka bottle. A big offense in itself, as this is his favorite. I will blame it all on averiecooks.com. She said it pays off, if you use best quality. And I can only agree!

So I filled the following into a bottle:
250ml (10 floz) of hubbies best vodka
6 vanilla bean pods sliced lengthwise.

And now you gotta be patient for 2 months and shake the bottle every now and then. As I have parked my bottle on a top shelf in the kitchen to keep it out of the way, I honestly don't think of it that often. The bottle is lucky if it gets my attention once a week, but then I do shake it pretty vigorously to make up for all the times I forgot about it.

And now I have top quality for under a €uro /20 ml and it is not artificial.

I hope this will help you as much as me.