DIY Homemade Vanilla Extract

For Christmas this year I wanted to be able to give something to friends that was fun, cute, and realistic. I stumbled upon a {new to me} food blog Annies Eats, and spent an hour going through old posts of hers. She had a fantastic tutorial on how to make homemade vanilla extract. Now I don’t know your friends, but most of mine like to bake. Who wouldn’t want homemade vanilla extract?! Especially when it can be so stupidly pricy at the store. Here was the process that I used to make a great Christmas gift:

Gather your ingredients: Vodka, vanilla beans, and glass bottles.

I got my vanilla beans from Amazon {here}. They were a great deal considering when you order that 30 pack, they ship for free, AND send an additional 10 beans because of the cost of your order. Thats 40 vanilla beans for $16.99. Un-real considering my local grocery store sells 3 beans for $10 {not even joking}.

I got my glass bottles from Speciality Bottle. I looked up coupon codes and ended up getting 14 bottles for $52. You can definitely get more simple bottles for a whole lot cheaper, but I couldn’t resist the swingtop.

For my vodkas I used up what was left from the Smirnoff bottle, and then went and got some really cheap vodka from the store. Every tutorial that I read said that it really doesn’t make a difference whether you use Grey Goose or the cheapest of cheap vodkas. Cheap it was! PS- pouring vodka when your pregnant..not exactly fun.

Start by {obviously} cleaning your bottles. Attach the tops. Then the fun parts start.

Measure out 8 oz. of vodka and pour in to bottle. My bottles are 8.5 oz bottles.

Slit vanilla beans in 1/2 length wise so that the true flavor of the beans will permeate the vodka.

Add three beans per bottle. To make this crystal clear you want three beans for every eight ounces of vodka.

Store in a cool dark place, and shake the bottles every week. You want to wait about 2 months before using the extract, although a lot of people said its even ok after a month!

I hope some of you try this! Annies Eats also said that when the extract runs out she simply fills it back up with vodka, and then replaces one or two of the beans. How awesome that you can just keep it going that easily.

<3,