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This must be one of the most simplest recipes you can do! Pure 100% vanilla beans extract is expensive, and with the same amount of money you can buy all the ingredients and make it yourself, pure, natural and organic! They make great gifts too!

I personally like to place the organic vanilla beans in a large bottle(s) because you will need to shake the bottle(s) every week (1 -2 per week), for the entire duration of storing. Now if you make many small bottles in advance, that would be a lot of shaking vs having one or two large bottles, you can always transfer them into small decorative bottles for gifts later.

I get about a pound of organic vanilla beans which is an incredible amount of beans. Recipes seem to recommend anywhere from 3 to 6 beans per cup of alcohol. I used 6 and still had enough beans to make this recipe 5 or 6 times over, I like to put more for that dark rich taste.

diyvanillaextract

The steps for preparing this are pretty simple ~

1. Remove vodka or rum from original bottle
2. Split vanilla beans in half
3. Sanitize bottle
4. Put beans in the bottom of the now empty and sanitized bottle
5. Pour vodka back into bottle
6. Cap it, date it and throw it in the back of your cabinet.

Sanitizing the bottle may have been overkill but I’d rather be safe than sorry. Give the bottle a shake everyday for the first week and then once or twice a week for the rest of the infusion period.

Your vodka/rum should be “extract” in 4 – 6 months but will continue to improve in flavor for at least another 6 months.

Add this wonderful extract to your smoothies, shakes, ice cream, desserts, coffee, tea, and other recipes! 😉

Note: If you are planning to use rum, be sure it’s not made with GMO corn syrup! Purchase imported alcohol, most likely it will not be from GMO vegetable.

DIY-Vanilla-Extract

Health benefits of vanilla

  • Vanilla beans are one of the expensive non-pungent spices especially used as flavoring agent in a wide array of sweet-drinks and confectionaries.
  • Vanilla extract composed of simple and complex sugars, essential oils, vitamins and minerals.
  • The chief chemical component in the beans is vanillin. They also include numerous traces of other constituents such as eugenol, caproic acid, phenoles, phenol ether, alcohols, carbonyl compounds, acids, ester, lactones, aliphatic and aromatic carbohydrates and vitispiranes.
  • Ancient Mayans believed that vanilla drink was supposed to have aphrodisiac qualities. No modern research study, however, establishes its role in the treatment of sexual dysfunctions.
  • Its extract contains small amounts of B-complex groups of vitamins such as niacin, pantothenic acid, thiamin, riboflavin and vitamin B-6. These vitamins help in enzyme synthesis, nervous system function and regulating body metabolism.
  • This spice also contains small traces of minerals such as calcium, magnesium, potassium, manganese, iron and zinc. Potassium is an important component of cell and body fluids that helps control heart rate and blood pressure. Manganese and copper are used by the body as co-factors for the antioxidant enzyme, superoxide dismutase. Iron is essential for red blood cell production and as a co-factor for cytochrome-oxidases enzymes.

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