Homemade Vanilla

I've been making vanilla and decided to document the color process each week... until we started eating it. As you can see in the first picture, some of this deliciousness is missing! So here it is in backwards order.

4 weeks old

3 Weeks old

2 weeks old

1 Week old

Birth/Day 1

Have you ever read the ingredients in your vanilla? Go, right now, and read them. The only thing that should be in that bottle is vanilla beans and alcohol. Unless you have spent the extra $13 or so for the 'fancy bottle' (it was costing us about $15 a bottle) it probably has some extra ingredients. I make an awful lot with vanilla so I have decided to take care of this issue and make my own!

Few fun facts about vanilla:

*McCormick Pure Vanilla Extract contains...

Vanilla Bean Extractives In Water, Alcohol (35%), and Corn Syrup.

(hum I thought it was PURE VANILLA?!)

*The FDA requires that the solution contain a minimum of 35% alcohol and 13.35 ounces of vanilla bean per gallon (so most companies only use the minimum... then mix it with whatever crap is cheap... water, corn syrup, or sugar)

*Imitation vanilla extract is usually made by soaking alcohol into wood, which contains vanillin. Vanillin is chemically treated to mimic the taste of vanilla.

*My vanilla is made with 40% alcohol Vodka and vanilla beans... only

*For 1/2 lb Madagascar Bourbon vanilla beans I paid $20.79 and got 10 Tahitian vanilla beans free. That is approximately 80-90 beans. I use 6 beans in 350 ml (or 12.68 oz). If you add the price of cheap vodka (like absolut) it is much cheaper than the real pure vanilla in a grocery store and now I know exactly what is in my vanilla. That alone is priceless in my opinion.