Homemade Vanilla

Get an early start on this great Christmas Gift. 

Well I made this last year for Christmas and it was a big hit. Great for all those people you would like to get something for but just don’t know what, including but not limited to, teachers, pastors, secretaries, and grandmas.

I found lots of different recipes online and talked with a few friends, who have made vanilla, then I threw most of that out and did whatever I wanted and it came out great. So here was my process…

Ingredients:

Vanilla beans (I used 10-12)
Vodka (though I read you can use rum too, most people say vodka)

Large Glass Jars with tight lids

Small (4oz) Glass Jars with lids (for the individual gift size once your vanilla is ready)

Knife or Kitchen Scissors.

Small Funnel

Time (about 2 months)

First I researched vanilla beans, it seems that vanilla beans are sort of like wine, in that they come with hints of this and hints of that. I found a really great comprehensive overview of vanilla beans on the Vanilla Garlic blog. I then selected Mexican Vanilla beans to make my vanilla, and purchased them from ebay.

Here is my step by step process…

Wash some large glass jars. I used quart canning jars ‘cause I had them, you can use any glass jar with a tight lid, I also used 2 in order to make the quantity that I wanted. Again you can make as much or as little as you would like at a time.

Cut the beans up the middle to about an inch of the top (so they stay together).

Put the beans into the glass jar(s) I had about 4 in each jar.

Pour vodka in, and close lid tightly.

Shake (a lot).

 

Put in a dark cool spot (our basement was perfect). Here is the progression of our vanilla.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 14

Let it sit for about 2 months. Shake about every week or so.

Day 60 (ish)

 

Prepping for the small glass jars.

I cut my vanilla beans all the way through now so I had half a bean for each jar. This allows for my recipients to have unlimited vanilla (more on that latter.)

Put 1/2 a bean in each small glass jar.

Pour vanilla into the small jars, a little funnel makes this so much easier and less messy. I found my funnel in the camping sections of Walmart or Target (I forget)





Attaching a label to your jar is a nice finishing touch. The label should tell them to shake the vanilla before using it (to get the best flavor).

My label also includes instructions on how to make your vanilla last forever. What you wanna know how to do that too… Well here it is…

When you use about half of your vanilla from your container fill with more vodka shake and let sit for a week or so, then you have vanilla ready to go. If you refilled after every use you would ALWAYs have vanilla ready to go. It is just that simple.

Cranberry Sauce



Picture by Skinny Taste 

Well it was always something I overlooked at the Thanksgiving table when I was a kid. That cranberry sauce, with the lines from the can still visible, never appealed to be. It came as a surprise to most people however because I love cranberry anything, juice, bread, muffins etc... but not cranberry sauce. That is until I had real fresh cranberry sauce. Now I can't have a Thanksgiving meal (or leftovers) without it. I have made it in the past the traditional whole cranberry way, with water, sugar, and cranberries boiled on the stove. This year I am going to be making a new recipe that I got from my favorite healthy cooking blog Skinny Taste (you will recall the sweet potato pie came from that sight too). This gal has done a knock out job on making delicious recipes with less fat and calories without adding fake phony food and keeping the taste.

So this year to lighten up our cranberry sauce by reducing the 2 cups of white sugar that is usually used to sweeten and extract the juices from the cranberries, we are going to be having a Cranberry Pear Sauce. The recipe still uses the whole cranberries but uses ripe pears to help sweeten the cranberries and also uses Agave Nectar.

I did a little research on why agave nectar was being used as a substitute for sugar and found basically two big points. The first is that it is sweeter then sugar and less viscus then honey so it

makes for a good sweetener, the second was that it doesn't effect blood sugar levels like sugar does. So even thought packs 60 calories per table spoon (vs 40 calories in sugar) it isn't swing blood sugar levels and it is 1.5 times sweeter then sugar so you can use less and still satisfy that sweet tooth. I guess it really isn't that new a thing but I'm not diabetic and don't know many who are (that I'm making food with at least), so it is new to me.

I can't wait to try this recipe and please check out Gina's Skinny Taste as well.

Pumpkin Vs Sweet Potato

Well as I said before I wasn't sure earlier what pie I was going to make for Thanksgiving this year. But after an experiment last night my husband and I decided Sweet Potato will be on our menu for this year. My husband was shocked when I told him what was in the pie, he couldn't believe it was so creamy and good. We have done pumpkin pies in the past and to get a really creamy taste we usually have to use half and half or cream and white sugar in the filling, that was simply not the case with this sweet potato pie recipe that I got from Skinny Taste.

I could tell you how to make this pie but it seems silly to do so when Gina has done such an excellent job. So here is where you want to go to get the recipe and step by step instructions.

I will say I forgot to add the vanilla and it still tasted great, I also miss read the ingredients and used twice as much potato as I should have (probably why it took longer to bake and didn't all fit in the pie crust) but because of that I will probably take 1/3 a cup of sugar out of the recipe (it was sweet enough for me as it was) when I make it again. For now we will just suffer through with our less then perfect sweet potato pie.