Joyful Abode

I love baking, especially from scratch. And one of my favorite smells is vanilla. But have you ever actually tasted store-bought vanilla extract, straight from the bottle? It’s vile!

Imagine how fabulous it would be if the vanilla you put into your baking actually tasted like something you wanted to drink? Or eat in your food?

When I was at the Strip in Pittsburgh, I bought 2 vanilla beans for 3 dollars each. They’re usually about 7, so that was a deal! I was quite thrilled.

And a few days ago, I bought some rum and a great bottle. Visions of vanilla extract are dancing in my head.

Now, a lot of people use vodka when they make extract, because it has less flavor to interfere with the other ingredients in your baking, but if you use rum, it’s supposed to be a sweeter, fuller vanilla extract, so that’s what I went with.

I cut the vanilla beans lengthwise to expose the seeds, and dropped them into the bottle. Then I drowned those suckers in rum and shook it to release some of the seeds. Now, I wait. In 4-6 weeks it should be useable, but some people who make their own vanilla extract won’t even touch it until it’s been extract-ing for a year.

Must… be… patient.

 PS I should probably stick some more vanilla beans in there. If I find some more reasonably-priced ones I’ll do that. Should’ve bought a few more in Pittsburgh!