Making our own vanilla extract has been on our to do list for quite a while. Last month I realized that if we were going to make homemade vanilla in time to give some away as gifts, we needed to get started. I ordered our vanilla beans and amber bottles through a Frontier coop. With free shipping, they had the best price and I could pick them up with the rest of our Frontier order.
The beans aren’t much to look at. They are a little oily. We split each bean in half down the middle, leaving each end intact.
The kids stuck a couple of beans in each of these 4 oz. jars. The jars are square, which just looks cool. Everything I read said that the quality of vodka doesn’t matter in making vanilla extract and to go with the cheap stuff. Not knowing what constitutes quality vodka, I went with it and bought the cheapest big bottle of vodka we found. Using a funnel, we filled each bottle with vodka, tucked the ends of the beans down, and screwed on the caps.
The bottles went back in the box to wait until December, when we will pull out fantastic pure vanilla extract.
We made one 8 oz. jar which has 4 vanilla beans in it. It looked lovely with the sunlight, but it’s packed away while it extracts the the vanilla goodness.
A little ribbon and homemade tags will make these great little gifts.
living peacefully with children 
How fun! I didn’t even know you could do that. I love the pictures to show me how it’s done. Great post!
Yum! I make my own vanilla extract too 🙂