In love with vanilla

Are you a baker?  Or just love vanilla?  If so then this is the project for you.  Making your own vanilla extract.  Now it does require patience since it takes about 6 months for it to do it's magic.

Here's mine I just started.

I didn't buy the most expensive vanilla beans.  I shopped sales, farmer's markets and such to pick up 9 vanilla beans for 750 ml of vodka.  Yes, that's right vodka!  You need alcohol to make vanilla extract.  And I would say that you should buy a good vodka, maybe not top shelf, but definitely not the cheap stuff.

Most of the recipes I found in cookbooks by Ina Garten and Sur La Table showed the vanilla extract in pretty little bottles with pull-down caps.  Now those bottles are perfect if you are giving this as a gift.  Since this is my first attempt at making vanilla extract (and I don't really anticipate problems!) I just used a large canning jar with a plastic lid.

So far my vodka is starting to turn liquid brown and in a few more months I should have vanilla extract.  Exciting!  Putting all of this together was so quick and easy.  You would be amazed and wonder "why didn't I do this before?"  Well, start now!  You can even use the vanilla beans in the jar to continue make vanilla extract by adding more vodka.  Or you can use the vanilla beans for other dishes, then add more vanilla beans to continue making vanilla extract.

Now on to other projects.  I should have some crochet projects to share since I seem to be on my cooking and gardening projects at the moment.