Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Homemade Vanilla Extract


What you need:

  • 1 small-ish bottle (or however much vanilla extract you want to make).
  • Enough vodka to fill the bottle(s).
  • About 2 vanilla beans per dl of vodka.


How you do it:

  • Take a smallish bottle and fill it with vodka. 
  • Split the vanilla beans and chop to smaller pieces if needed. Add them to the bottle.
  • Put the bottle away somewhere and forget about it, the longer the better, at least a couple of months. (I forgot about mine for more than 6 months.)
  • When you find it again you have vanilla extract! Enjoy!


What you can further do:

  • Strain the vanilla extract to get rid of the vanilla bean remnants.
  • Add sugar syrup or glucose syrup, or some other syrup you like, or honey, according to taste. Shake well, until the syrup dissolves.
  • Pour into a bottle and let rest in a dark and cool place for at least a month.
  • Now you have vanilla extract liqueur! About the yummiest stuff on the planet, if you like vanilla!

6 comments:

  1. My stomach can't really handle liquor but I think the idea of making it is fascinating!

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    1. The macerating process is super pretty too, with this and with other liqueurs! I love having pretty jars of macerating whatnots in the window! <3

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  2. "When you find it again you have vanilla extract!" XD
    About the same process as a tincture, only those you have to shake every day.
    I'll sure give it a try one of these days.

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    1. Lol! Yeah! I'm sure some recipes out there say that you should shake the extract-in-process every once in a while too... but I completely forgot about mine and it wasn't shaken even once for half a year, and it turned out mighty fine anyway! :)

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    2. Good to know.. I'm the forgetful type hehe.
      Btw, do you think a touch of cardamom would fit fine in there?

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    3. Yeah, I don't see why not. I love using cardamom in liqueurs so it should be awesome in a vanilla extract too!

      I really should post more about my liqueur experiments!

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