Homemade Vanilla Extract

For those who use Vanilla essense / extract often, this is a very economical way of making your own pure vanilla extract.

Pure vanilla extract is costly and the imitation vanilla essense is more sweet than having vanilla flavour.

To make your own extract, you just need vanilla beans, vodka and clean glass bottles. I used 3 vanilla beans for 1 cup of vodka.
I

I just made mine...waiting to use them in my baking

 

I'm not sure where you can get vanilla beans in India, but I have read that India has really quality vanilla beans.

Procedure (I read in various blogs, and I've writted here what I did):

3 vanilla beans to 1 cup vodka
Have a clean glass bottle ready (mine was recycled jam bottle)

Cut the bean length wise and place it in bottle. Pour the vodka over the beans, close lid tightly and shake well. Store in a cool dark place (mine is sitting in the dark corner of my top pantry shelf).
It should be ready for use after 6 - 8 weeks, remembering to give the bottle a good shake every week. Some websites say 6 weeks, but I'm gonna wait till 8 weeks.
I think, as you use the extract you can keep topping it off with more vodka.
If this turns out a success, I'm planning to do more in small cute bottles and gift them to my baking buddies for Christmas

You can also put split vanilla bean in a container of white sugar to get vanilla scented / flavoured sugar for baking.