Homemade Vanilla Extract is the easiest thing you’ll ever make at home! 2 simple ingredients and in a couple months you’ll have the best holiday gift ever.
I was looking at my vanilla extract one day and realized how it had ‘natural caramel coloring’ added to it. Yeah, no thanks.
There just had to be another way to make it! Well my friends, yes, yes there is.
You’ll be blown away by how easy this is.
I am going to show you the easiest and most practical way to make your own homemade vanilla extract!
- All you need are cute glass bottles (that is of course a requirement)
- fresh vanilla beans
- unflavored vodka
- and a little bit of time.
Believe me, homemade vanilla extract is 1000 times better than anything you can buy in the store.
It starts perfectly with fresh vanilla beans…
How to Make homemade vanilla extract
- You want to slice the vanilla beans to fit into the bottles and slice down the middle to expose the guts of the beans, aka as the caviar.
- Add any unflavored vodka to the bottles and tightly seal with a lid.
Yep.. that’s it.
Ends in Homemade, All-Natural Vanilla Extract 2-3 Months Later. The picture below is the vanilla extract on it’s 3-month mark.
You can use this for all the gluten-free apple crisps, chocolate chip cookies and applesauce spice cakes that you would need vanilla extract for.
How to keep the vanilla extract going
Each bottle I’d say has about 4-5 uses out of them by reusing the vanilla beans.
You can actually keep adding vodka to the bottles overtime once you’ve used a little. This extract will practically last forever! We personally keep them on a rotation since you still need about 3 months for them to soak.
Amber says
Shaking the bottles once a week brings out more flavor.
Lindsay says
Yes! Thank you for making that point Amber. Get that vanilla bean deliciousness moving around! 😉