Thursday, February 16, 2012

Homemade Vanilla Extract: Days 1 & 2

Sites like http://www.thehappyhousewife.com/, http://www.diynatural.com/, and http://www.allrecipes.com/, all have recipes posted on how to make your own vanilla extract; when I saw how easy, and relatively cheap it was, I decided I had to try it!  

**Added bonus to this cool experiment, is that I will be able to stop buying the cheap imitation extract!!

 Day 1

I started out with just four items:


A bottle of vodka we had in our bar.
1 vanilla bean we bought at Whole Foods for $6.
2 bottle we found at Michael's for $1 each

Make sure you wash the bottles before you use them!


I cut the bean in half and put inside the bottles, then I filled up the bottle with vodka.

 
Make sure you leave enough room to put the cork back in, I made this mistake and had to end up pouring out some of the vodka.

 

Now you need to find a place to store your bottle (or bottles) because the process of the vodka becoming extract takes several months; about 2 to 3, but for a bottle this size, it might be less.  Sure this process requires patience, but soon you will have your very own homemade vanilla extract, and all for less than $10!

Oh and I read on a few of the websites, that you should be able to use each bean at least twice!


Day 2

By day 2, I could already see progress being made!


Update: at the end of Week 1

Make sure you shake  your bottles just a little bit about once a week; that way the vanilla can be distributed throughout!

No comments:

Post a Comment