1/1/2024 0 Comments Homemade vanilla sugar![]() ![]() They’re considerably cheaper than Grade A, and they’re perfect for making vanilla sugar and vanilla extract. They ship their vanilla beans in vacuum-sealed bags, so they aren’t dried out, like grocery store beans tend to be. Lately, I’ve been buying my beans from Vanilla Bean Kings on Amazon. My advice: skip the grocery stores and warehouse clubs, and order your vanilla beans online. Vanilla bean shortages have caused prices to skyrocket in recent years, but you can still get beans for around $1 each, if you know where to look and what to buy. sweeten coffee, lemonade, hot or iced tea and cocktails.intensify the vanilla-flavor in whipped cream, frosting or ice cream.flavor sugar cookies, vanilla cakes and other baked goods.The vanilla seeds are likely to cause the sugar to crystallize. ![]() Candy recipes that call for boiling a sugar syrup are also a no go. Just don’t bother adding it to recipes with other strongly-flavored ingredients, like chocolate. If a recipe has vanilla in its name, or calls for a significant amount of vanilla extract, swapping in vanilla sugar for the granulated sugar is an easy way to amp up the vanilla flavor. You can use vanilla sugar as a 1:1 replacement for the granulated sugar in any recipe, but it works best in recipes where vanilla is the star. That’s a lot of hassle for something that literally takes two ingredients and a few minutes to make yourself. You basically have to order it online, or buy it from a cooking specialty store. It’s a common ingredient in Europe, but much harder to track down in the U.S. Vanilla sugar is nothing more than granulated sugar that’s been infused with vanilla beans. I’ve included free printable labels that you can use to dress up your jars. Even if you’re an average baker like me, the homemade stuff pays for itself pretty quickly.Vanilla sugar is expensive to buy, but ridiculously cheap and easy to make. In the first five years of making my own vanilla, I spent $30 on four high-quality beans, $6 on a single inexpensive bottle of vodka, and approximately $5 for the jar. Prefer the store brand? That’s $11 per 4-ounce bottle, or $110 for five years. If each jar costs $18, that’s $180 over a five-year span. Say you buy two 4-ounce bottles of the good vanilla extract from the grocery store every year. And while she buys pure vanilla extract in bulk from Costco ($50 for a 32-ounce bottle), it’s still one of the most expensive products on her grocery list.Ī bit of simple math reveals that homemade vanilla extract is the more economical choice. Adekoya uses vanilla in virtually every one of her recipes-she probably goes through more vanilla extract in one day than I do in a month. I gifted a tiny vial to Lara Adekoya, founder of boutique baking company Fleurs et Sel. But because I’m only a part-time baker, I wanted to test my DIY vanilla on a real pro. I’ve had my personal jar of homemade vanilla extract for over eight years, and it’s never let me down. Here’s how to do it: How to Make Homemade Vanilla Extract Seriously, DIY vanilla extract is the gift that keeps on giving. This, combined with the idea that I could produce a never-ending supply of homemade vanilla extract-one suitable for all my baking, cooking, and beverage needs-simply by adding in more vodka (another spoiler: it’s not quite that simple, but the method is still easy), was enough to convince me to give it a go. I quickly learned that making my own vanilla extract would require just a few vanilla beans, some cheap vodka, a glass jar, and a lot of patience. There are a number of ways to reuse spent vanilla pods, like making extract, vanilla salt, or vanilla sugar, that eke out every last molecule of flavor the pricey pods have to offer. Any time a recipe called for more than a scant teaspoon, I’d walk away feeling guilty: Those tiny bottles are expensive, not to mention environmentally wasteful and hit or miss in terms of flavor and quality.Īfter buying some very expensive vanilla beans a few years back (using a discount from my kitchen job), I researched how to get the biggest bang for my buck. At the time I had been going through a lot of store-bought vanilla extract and racking up quite a bill while doing so. Until recently, I wondered if homemade vanilla extract could improve my projects-not to mention save me some money in the long run (spoiler alert: it did and it does). As a professional food blogger and recipe tester, I bake quite a lot and drink more flavored coffee beverages than I care to admit. ![]()
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