We took an unintentional break from posting but have every intention of continuing with our little blog. A lot has been going in our lives and somehow instead of weeks it’s been months since we last posted something. When we set out to do this blog our goal was to share memories and recipes with our friends and family. That is what we have done and will keep doing until we run out of recipes or ideas. We are happy to say we still have lots we want to do, we just needed to take a little break from our hobby, and chances are we will again in the future. Thanks for all of you who have told us to keep going, and how much you enjoy our posts. It makes all this hard work worth while, especially when we are just doing this for fun.
It’s been hot this summer, or at least hot for our northern city. Without air conditioning its hard to want to turn on an oven. Its even a little too hot to cook. So instead we are going to do something a little different and post about an experiment we have been working on since last September. We decided to try and make homemade vanilla extract, and in November that is exactly what we did. Unlike our other posts this is not a guide on how to make vanilla extract, we just want to take you on this journey with us. Who knows maybe at the end of all this experimenting we will be able to confidently do a post on making the best vanilla extract.
Once we had decided we were going to give this a shot Mom got her tablet out and immediately went into research mode. Here is what she learnt:
- There are different types of vanilla beans, and they have different undertones. The two mentioned the most were:
- Madagascar: rich and creamy
- Tahitian: floral with undertones of cherry-chocolate, licorice, and caramel.
- It is recommended to use vodka or bourbon, some said to use more expensive liquor, others said you could use more reasonably priced liquor.
- Grade B vanilla beans are used to make extract.
- Recommended ratio was 6 beans to 8 ounces of liquor.
- The extract needs to be kept in a cool dark place and shaken once a week and should not be used until the 6-month mark.
After doing our research we had a few decisions to make. Did we want to get both types of beans and liquor? Did we want to try one combo first and then another. What kind of container should we put the extract in, should we order cute bottles from online?
First, we had to find the beans, so I went online and looked at our options, and we decided to start with Madagascar vanilla beans. Once ordered, we took a trip to the liquor store, which was a bit of an adventure. Mom and I know very little about alcohol and because we read on one of the posts that we didn’t have to use the highest priced liquor we decided to use the lowest priced liquor and bought both vodka and bourbon. We also decided to wait on the cute little bottles and used mason jars instead.
Next, we had to do some math and figure out how many jars of extract we could make based on the amount of vanilla beans we had. I am not a fan of math, but we got it sorted eventually. In the end we decided to only use vodka this time round and that we would maybe try bourbon with Tahitian beans next time.
We determined that we would do a ratio of 9 beans to 13 oz of vodka and made a total of 4 jars of extract. There is all sorts of information out there regarding vanilla extract therefore it wasn’t easy to determine if we should split the beans down the centre so the seeds are in contact with the vodka more. Or if we should leave them whole or cut them up or squeeze them out. In the end we cut them in half but kept them whole. As instructed, we kept them in a cool dark place, the pantry, and Mom shaked them once a week, and we for 6 months! April came and with everything going on we decided to wait to try and post about the vanilla extract results. Last month we finally got around to trying it out so stay tuned for part 2 to find out how we think it went.
