I Heart Vanilla - The Finest Vanilla Beans and Products

One (1) vanilla bean is good for 1 cake, a batch of cookies, a tray of brownies, 1 pie, 1 batch of fruit compote, 1... you get the picture. 1 bean goes a long way.

♥ Waste not, want not! ♥
Flavour your sugar with the scraped out vanilla pods. Just throw them into your sugar pot or you can use them to flavour milk for the ultimate Hot Butter Cardamom Vanilla Drink found Sweet Recipes.

Vanilla Extract is not in this equation because it does not include alcohol.

 

Non-alcoholic liquid & vanilla beans & heat = vanilla-flavoured liquid. 

Best liquids to use: Milk, cream, water, juice. Use 1 vanilla pod for 250ml liquid 

Instructions: First, heat up your liquid until it starts to boil. Turn off heat and let the liquid rest for 5 minutes before throwing your vanilla beans in. Steep the vanilla bean, 1 whole pod and vanilla caviar, into 250ml of any of the aforementioned liquid for 15-30 minutes. The longer you steep the vanilla in the liquid, the better the flavour. 

Vanilla extract evaporates.

 

That is the one setback in using alcohol-base vanilla extracts.  You see, almost all traditional vanilla extracts uses alcohol (35% and above) as a medium of extraction and preservation. So alcohol level that high is very susceptible to evaporation when expose to direct heat or prolong exposure to air.

Best ways to use vanilla extract: Baked goods with a cream base; milk, cream, cheese, butter. Use it in cold preparation foods that is not alcohol-sensitive; cocktails, fruit punches, freshly cut fruits and fruit juices.

 

Instructions: Use 2 teaspoon of vanilla extract for a full vanilla flavour in your baked goods.

What is the difference between using vanilla beans and extract? See our FAQ section