Christmas in July – Homemade Vanilla Extract
With just under 5 months until Christmas, it might be time to start thinking about gifts for your friends and family. That’s what I was doing about a year ago. I am definitely a big planner and had decided early in 2009 to make as many Christmas gifts as I could. Some of these gifts required quite a bit of time and some were easy to throw together. This week I’ll be sharing the gifts that I gave our family and friends last year.
The first gift came about due to a sale on Amazon. There was a great deal on 1/2 lb of vanilla beans. I started with two bottles of vodka and the vanilla beans. Once the beans were split (but not scraped) and placed in the vodka, the bottles just had to sit in a cool dark place. Every couple of weeks Hubby would pull the vodka out of the closet and shake the crap out of it. A couple months later the vanilla extract was ready to go!
I ordered some bottles online and made some labels for the bottles to finish off the look. I also placed two vanilla beans into each bottle.
I love that the vanilla extract tastes so good, has the specks of fresh vanilla beans, and will essentially never run out. If the vanilla starts running low, you can just top it off with some more vodka. As you use vanilla beans, just throw the pods in the bottle to replenish the vanilla flavor.
One Year Ago: Goat Cheese Potato Salad and Salmon with Yellow Pepper and Cilantro Pesto
Two Years Ago: Champagne Cupcakes
I am Jen the Beantown Baker. Engineer by day and baking maven by night. Hubby serves as my #1 fan and official taste tester. We got hitched back in 2006. Barefoot. In the sand. With the waves crashing behind us. It was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. 
How yummy, and the color is so beautiful!
beantownbaker — March 18th, 2013 @ 10:59 am
Yes, I absolutely love the color of this curd!
I love fruit curds. This combination sounds wonderful. I’ve been wanting to make passionfruit curd for a long time. Hopefully I will get to that soon.
beantownbaker — March 18th, 2013 @ 11:00 am
The passionfruit curd is definitely my favorite of all time. It’s just such a unique flavor.
I love lemon curd on a good fruit quickbread. I once made lemon loaf with lemon curd and it was to DIE for. How long to curds typically keep in the fridge?
beantownbaker — March 18th, 2013 @ 3:21 pm
Oohhh… double lemon – sounds delicious. They never stay around very long when I make them, but I think they’d be fine in the fridge for a week or two.
this sounds delicious! I’ve got some key lime curd in my fridge, not sure what I’ll do with the last bit of it…
beantownbaker — March 19th, 2013 @ 12:48 pm
Key lime curd – YUM! Did you juice them yourself? They’re so tiny.
I love the idea of a blackberry lime curd… two of my favorite flavors married into curd! I love meyer lemon curd, too 🙂
beantownbaker — March 19th, 2013 @ 12:47 pm
I still haven’t been able to find meyer lemons at my store. Of course, I haven’t looked too hard either…
This looks delicious! And I love anything that gives me a use for egg yolks, since I use whites so often.
beantownbaker — March 25th, 2013 @ 1:18 pm
I’m the same way. I hoard recipes that take divided eggs. Now that I started making ice cream, I need more that use whites…
If you make a cake or something with the curd in it or on it does it need to be refrigerated?
beantownbaker — April 4th, 2013 @ 7:15 am
I used this curd in a cake: http://www.beantownbaker.com/2013/03/coconut-almond-cake-with-blackberry-lime-curd-filling.html and the leftovers were stored in the fridge.
This looks amazing, but I was wondering how much it made, I have picked enough blackberries to make 3 times this. Xx
beantownbaker — October 23rd, 2013 @ 12:26 am
It made probably 2.5-3 cups of curd. Hope you enjoy it!