Vanilla Extract
So easy, so cheap, why not make your own vanilla extract
Ingredients
- 4 to 6 Vanilla beans, sliced open leaving the top and bottom joined together
- brandy or brandy and vodka mix
- empty clean bottle or jar (the Grolsch beer bottles with swing tops are great)
Method
- Put the beans into the clean bottle, cover with alcohol and place in a dark spot, not too far away because it needs to be shaken every day for a month.
- Smell regularly, it takes about a month to get the flavour into the alcohol but the smell strengthens quite quickly and well before the taste is obvious.
- At any time add more vanilla pods – scraped pods from making cakes and ice cream can be added to the bottle after rinsing them. Used pods will never go to waste again.
- When the mix is dark and aromatic and tastes like vanilla decant off a small amount for usage and add more pods and alcohol to ensure they stay covered. This mother batch can continue indefinitely as long as it is given about a month between adding more alcohol and decanting off some reserve. As there are more and more beans added remove any that have gone squidgy.