Vanilla Extract Update

Posted by Somer on July 29th, 2009 at 6:56 pm

I was having some issues earlier with my homemade vanilla extract that temporarily lead me to believe that I had mucked up the entire project and had not only wasted two perfectly good vanilla beans, but also perfectly good rum.  It just wasn’t getting that dark color we usually know vanilla extracts to have.  It looked like tea, and that wasn’t what I had expected.  Luckily, the internet is rich with the information that I needed and I discovered that, for this virgin batch, it is perfectly normal for the color to be light.  Just to be safe, I added two more vanilla beans to my bottle, ($6 from the World Market) and waited the full 8 weeks before I started using my extract.  It still is very light and when I smell it the predominant smell is still rum (of the memories of high school that come flooding in from that scent) but it is a usable product.

I wanted to give it a first try in a dish where I could tell if it had a vanilla taste to it or if I was just using tinted rum:  French Toast.  I always add a swill of vanilla extract to my egg wash for French Toast for a little extra flavor.  I was very happy when I served this breakfast and it tasted exactly as it always does.  Needless to say, I was feeling very pleased with myself that I had whipped up a HUGE batch of homemade vanilla extract for a fraction of the price of the store-bought stuff.  You really ought to try this out.  I give it my stamp of approval (like that means anything).

On a little admin note, please forgive me if my posts are few and far between.  My family and I are relocating from the Seattle area to the Philadelphia area at the end of August.  Right now we are eating out a lot and grubbing in order to clean out the pantry and freezer.  There are no exciting meals coming out of my kitchen right now because we are focused on getting all of our belongings packed up so that they can be loaded on a truck and driven across the country, safely I hope.  However, we will be staying with my mother temporarily (when we moved to the Seattle area from West Virginia, we got our apartment over the internet without first seeing it.  We had to because we didn’t know a soul out here and it was a mistake because our first place was in a scary scary area).  My mom is a big fan of cooking and looks forward to the possibility of my helping her in the kitchen.  My posts will kick back up once we arrive and even more so when we are able to secure a place of our own.