Homemade vanilla extract is easy and you can use it for so many things! You will notice a major improvement in flavor and cost!
Gather Vanilla beans, 80-proof alcohol, Glass jars or jars with tight seals & a funnel.
Take 5-6 vanilla beans (1/2 ounce total) split each bean in half. Scrape out the beans and put in jar and then pop the beans in the jar. Add the 8 ounces of alcohol. Twist on the lid, add a label with the date, shake and put in a cool dark space.
I shake mine once a day for about a month and then leave it alone for at least 6-12 months.
I made a batch now (July) so by December I can give away for holiday gifts. Make sure to shake it every once in awhile.
You can try different beans:
Madagascar Vanilla – very common and has a creamy and rich flavor
Mexican Vanilla – has a darker, almost smoky flavor
Tahitian Vanilla – also very common and has a rich floral flavor
Add the bean type to your label for an added touch. You can try adding different alcohol too! Have fun!!
Vanilla Bean Cheesecake
Three whole scraped vanilla beans give this glorious, rich cheesecake telltale black specks of tropical flavor. This makes a big batch, so you might have enough to make some mini cheesecakes too. 5 eggs, 1/4 cup butter melted, 2 vanilla beans split lengthwise and seeds scraped, 1.5 cups white sugar, 1 vanilla bean split lengthwise and seeds scraped, 2 pounds cream cheese softened, 1/2 cup heavy cream, 1 package vanilla sandwich cookies, 3/4 cup sour cream, 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
Shops open 12-4 and This weekend is your LAST chance to make your own vanilla extract in time for the holidays! Bake the BEST everything this holiday season! #tahitian #vanilla #vanillabean #fresh #makeyourown #vanillaextract #doityourself #spiceshop #bakery #guide #mainstreet #coldspring #sunday #sundayvibes #coldspringny #autumn #autumnvibes #foliage #hudsonvalley (at Spice Revolution) https://www.instagram.com/p/CkDeut9gO-x/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
We are making some Tahitian vanilla bean Pavlovas. Check out this easy to follow recipe or shop some of our beautiful Tahitian type vanilla beans from Ecuador
the flower blooms one day per year and must be manually pollinated. pollination causes the base of the flower to swell almost immediately, from there it takes weeks to develop into a seed pod
vanilla costs about $300/lb. this being the pulp of the fruit itself, the extract we are familiar with is dilute. second only to saffron for expense. the price also tends to fluctuate greatly depending on the abundance of any given year's crops
there are three strains of cultivated vanilla. cultivation dates as far back as the totonac people in the 12th century, who live in present day veracruz, on the eastern coast of mexico. the olmecs may have also used wild vanilla in cooking thousands of years earlier
vanilla was cultivated in european botanical gardens but not really used much for 300 years after the colombian invasion of mesoamerica until finally some idiot realized the melipona bee doesn't live there, which may not have even been the correct type of bee (possibly euglossine)
five years later (1841) a 12-year-old slave named edmond albius on the island of reunion figured out how to manually pollinate the flowers, which is an extremely delicate and difficult process. some french botanist claimed to have invented this process, and people believed him for over a century
the aroma doesn't develop until after the seed pod is harvested and processed. it must be sorted, graded, blanched, then alternately sweated and dried for 15-30 days. the blanching halts fermentation, which makes one wonder, what is a fermented vanilla seed pod like?
synthetic vanillin is derived from eugenol, from clove oil, and lignin, from any number of sources. the vast majority of synthetic vanilla is made from wood creosotes which occur as a product of lignin pyrolysis (fire). its major source is, like anything, the petrochemical industry, which requires heat to fractionally distill oil into several byproducts (kerosene, naphtha, gasoline, etc). which is to say, 85% of synthetic vanilla is made from the wood smoke of the oil industry. you might be inclined to ask "doesn't this pollute" which, if you recapture the smoke to sell its particulate creosotes to synthetic vanilla producers, no, i guess not really, or "why don't they use oil to heat the oil" because it is more profitable to sell the oil and burn wood to make it, obviously
it is difficult to tell the difference between natural and synthetic vanilla in baked goods, because the baking process burns off the distinctive notes, most of which differ by growing region (tahitian vanilla is floral, indonesian vanilla is smoky, mexican vanilla is woody or spicy, bourbon vanilla from reunion has an alcoholic richness)
price markup occurs not at the point of farming, but after the point of curing. there is no set price for green vanilla beans, but there is a set price for dried vanilla beans, after they have passed through several middlemen from farmer to broker to curing. after this point, they are marked up several more times before finally making it to grocery store shelves in the form of bottled extract
in 2017 a cyclone destroyed maybe 30-80% of madagascan vanilla crops, where possibly as much as 60-80% of the global supply of vanilla is grown. in the 5 years since then, the price has not recovered, but boy howdy, have the labels gotten more fancy in specifying when it's from madagascar, haven't they?
70% of madagascar lives below the poverty line, despite the island producing the majority of the world's supply of the second most expensive spice
by volume, the number of vanilla beans imported to the united states every year is nearly two for every single member of the population (~640m, for a ~330m population)
anyway stop pouring a whole bottle of it into a cup for a joke what the fuck is wrong with you people i hope to god that ibuprofen potion post was staged with some vaguely brown liquid. also the word vanilla etymologically derives from the latin vagina meaning sheath ok bye
Ayaka appeared as a guest in Miyuu's most recently published YouTube video promoting Japanese shaved ice shops. As expected, Miyuu went all the way to Sendai to find Ayaka. lol
They shared three shaved ice, the flavours seems a bit out there to someone who don't get exposed to shaved ice much:
Organic lemon milk(??)
Fig rare cheese milk(?!)
Organic blueberry tahitian vanilla milk belgian chocolate (what a fucking long name...!!!!)
The duo's simultaneous reaction at 4:32 is absolutely adorable!
And also, this shit at 7:57 killed me with their cuteness.
✨Thai Iced Tea Buttermilk Panna Cotta✨ is back in stock @pvillefm preorders and will be available tomorrow at the shop and all weekend long! @bobolinkdairyandbakehouse #buttermilk and our #fromscratch #tahitian #vanilla extract makes for Summer Snacking 🥇GOLD #artisan #bakery #spiceshop #locallymade #locallysourcedfood #thaiicedtea #sweettreats #gold #custard #pannacotta (at Spice Revolution) https://www.instagram.com/p/CfHkV8BgBCZ/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=