Vanilla Extract

We visited St. Thomas last year and got caught up in the "DUTY FREE" shopping hype. The cruise line did a brilliant job convincing us that You Must Spend Money Here. We ended up buying our legal allowance of alcohol, and oh look: all of it is still sitting on our little shelf. We bought vodka, and it sat in the freezer for months and months, untouched. We needed to do something with it. The answer? Homemade vanilla extract.

Vanilla extract, if you look at the label, is basically vanilla bean and alcohol. Vodka is essentially flavorless alcohol, so it makes the perfect base for the vanilla. Our vodka probably deserved a better fate: a glamorous Czech expat model/attorney/spy named Svetlana should have sipped this ice-cold in her Upper East Side apartment...

But instead, the vodka became this humble brown loveliness:

The picture makes the vanilla appear lighter than it is (we set it up next to a light to show off the Loch Ness Monster-looking vanilla beans). So how to do it? We had some leftover vanilla beans that we threw into the vodka, then bought additional Madagascar beans from Penzey's. We split the beans lengthwise before tossing them in.

It's been steeping for about a month now, and contrary to a couple of websites that suggest that the homemade stuff doesn't pack as much of a punch, it has a powerful and full flavor, vanilla with floral overtones. We've used it in cheesecake and a variety of frostings, and we're really happy with the results. You can keep this vanilla for years and years, adding additional vodka and beans as necessary.

And if you use rotgut instead of premium vodka, the price is better than a comparable volume of store-bought vanilla extract. I haven't tried it, but if you buy the truly truly cheapie stuff, you can apparently use a Brita filter to transform rotgut vodka into premium vodka. It's Magic!

Plus, you can fish out the pods whenever you need vanilla beans (most of the beans remain in the pods), and scrape out the seeds as you need them!

I suppose you could also drink this straight up as KILLER VANILLA VODKA, but that would make me feel way too much like Tom Hanks when he appeared on Family Ties as Ned the Alcoholic Uncle. Anyone else remember this? To demonstrate the Depths of His Disease, Ned glugged down vanilla extract in the Keaton family kitchen. Why do I remember this and NOTHING about, say, first year Contracts?

This stuff is the best. Try it sometime!

Comments

[chase]

I'm dying to try this. I'll let you know when i do. :)

[Randi]

The only thing I remember about first year contracts is you must have "consideration" and a meeting of the minds. Something for something. Other than that, I don't remember much either.