Homemade Vanilla Extract!

· by · in Food & drinks. ·

So, today my friend Tracy (and her baby boy Jack!) came over for our weekly craft day, and we made some vanilla extract! Unfortunately, I didn’t know I’d be creating a blog so I didn’t think to take pictures of us making the vanilla extract, but it’s prettyyy easy!! First off, I got the idea from Bethany Actually. We ordered one pound of vanilla beans, without calculating that we DID NOT need all them beans lol (201 to be exact!) Bethany used 1 3/4 beans per 4 ounce jar, but since we had so many we did 2. I ordered the beans from saffron.com ($19.95 for 1lb!!) and got the jars from specialtybottle.com (74cents per 4ounce jar!) We bought the cheapest vodka we could get. The alcohol burns out anyway, so don’t bother purchasing expensive vodka….unless you plan on drinking up all the extra!

Literally, all you do, is cut the vanilla beans lengthwise and then cut them in half, stick them in the bottles, fill the bottles with vodka (or another alcohol of your choice, bourbon makes AMAZING vanilla extract) and stick them in a dark place for 6 months! That’s it! I’ll be posting pictures of it every week so you see how the color turns to a beautiful shade of amber. I also designed some labels that I’ll be slapping on all the bottles when I get some sticker paper. They’ll be going out as Christmas presents this year to some very lucky people 🙂

Until tomorrow!!

14 responses to “Homemade Vanilla Extract!”

  1. So these will be ready by october. They look so pretty. Especially with the background of that gorgeous tree in bloom.

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  8. When you say the alcohol burn out, you mean when you cook with it, of course…right? I was wondering if the smell of alcohol is too strong when you open the jar. Is it really safe to use these when cooking for kids? Just a thought, because i use so much extract in my recipies, that I’d love to make my own ^^ Sue.

    • Yes, it burns out when cooking/baking with it 🙂 also, you shouldn’t be using so much of it that it would lend an alcoholic flavor to it at all. I personally don’t like to use alcohol based vanilla extract in things that won’t be cooked, such as smoothies, just because its too intense for me! I usually use a vegetable glycerin based extract for things like that. Hope that helped! 🙂

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