Thanks to the inspiration of my oldest, I am beginning to think more deeply about making things from scratch. She brought me a cute little blue bottle full of vanilla for my birthday, and I was thrilled. A blue bottle alone would have been a great gift for me, but vanilla to boot? Yumola.
But I haven't begun to use the extract yet for fear that it would be gone with a blink. I comforted myself by starting my own vanilla batch. I took an old beer bottle from an ale I found at Trader Joe's, I scraped off all the labels, and voila! I have my vanilla bottle.
~ my bottle's brief foray into the afternoon light...it is now a prisoner of the dark ~
It is hard to even refer to this as a recipe, but here you go:
Three vanilla beans, cut open carefully so as not to spill one little vanilla bean.
Insert into a bottle.
Cover the beans with vodka.
Close the bottle.
Shove into the dark corner of the cookbook cupboard (or any dark corner will do.)
Wait impatiently for vanilla to happen (approximately 3 months.)
Shake the bottle every now and then.
Enjoy!
