DIY: Homemade Vanilla Extract

So, I was searching the interwebs and discovered I could make my very own vanilla extract!

I will never have to ask anyone to go to Mexico just to get me some.

All my baker friends will be so excited when they receive some of this stuff for Christmas.

All it takes is 2 ingredients:

vanilla beans

and

vodka

Yeah, the alcoholic said vodka. Hubby is mad I’m even bringing it in the house, but I will be good.

And once made, it just sits on the shelf making yummy goodness until Christmas time.

How easy is that?

Ok here we go:

Gather your supplies. I ordered vanilla beans on Ebay, inexpensive and to my untrained eye, they look fresh, moist and smell divine.

Slice open the vanilla beans lengthwise to expose the seeds inside, I also cut them in half before depositing them in the bottles.

My thought was the vodka bottle would be glass and I wanted to how different containers fared up under the long haul.

But the bottles were plastic so I tried a few different sizes.

My concoction was 1 vanilla beans per 1 cup liquid.

These Vitamin water bottles hold 2 cups liquid.

this was about 5 1/2 cups liquid and 6 bean pods.

Shaking up the seeds

From all I’ve read, I’ve decided I will shake the bottles once a day for a week, then put them in a cool, dry place (the garage) and shake once a week until christmas.

All the websites say the longer it sits, the stronger the flavor and you can add more beans and vodka right in when you start to use it up!

And this is 12 hours later:

this is a week later:

(sidenote: after 1 week, I thought the smaller bottles looked weaker than the big one, so I put another bean in each bottle)

A month later:

image coming soon

UPDATE: 12/12/2008: I gave away some small sample bottles to people and told them to try it out.

I think I would recommend putting 1 1/2 to 2 beans worth to 1 cup of liquid. It just doesn’t look as dark as my Costco vanilla extract.

Iordered some bottles online here. 8 oz size.

~~~

I purchased these bottles from the local craft store, but I’m thinking I need something with a screw on lid. Any Suggestions?

Did anyone say…..

 

Yeah, a little treat before my son made me watch Phantom of the Opera on DVD.