This picture shows a glass bottle with vanilla beans and vodka in them. The bottle is being held up to the window. The liquid is a dark, clear, amber color.

Today we have a short and sweet recipe/how-to for you, DIY Homemade Vanilla Extract. As we are farmers and we work hard all day and sometimes into the night, we like to eat. And when we are all at the kitchen table, we can put away some food, so we cook a lot. One of the most common and family-favorite flavors in baking is vanilla.

If you have been to the store anytime in the last year, you know prices have gone up on everything, including spices, herbs, and flavoring. It seems crazy to pay a high price for a little bottle of vanilla, so we decided to make our own. As you know from many of our other talks, we like to make as much as we can for ourselves and we grow many of the ingredients we need to do so. Vanilla is no different.

We do have a vanilla bean orchid but it is not old enough to put off vanilla beans yet. Yes, vanilla beans come from an orchid, that was a new one for us also when we first learned of it.

This picture shows a young vanilla bean orchid in a pot with a small trellis to climb on.

The vanilla bean orchid is in fact a running vine, that requires a trellis. Not a very fancy-looking plant for being an orchid and giving you vanilla but it takes all kinds. We assume at some time it will have flowers and beans. The research did say they grow very slowly and take years to start giving you beans.

If you do not grow your own vanilla bean orchid or if your orchid is not putting off beans, you can buy vanilla beans in many grocery and specialty shops.

StarWest, one of our favorite stores for all things herbal, offers several options for organic vanilla beans.

As we said, our orchid is just a baby and is not ready to produce yet, so we bought our beans at the grocery store.

Making your own DIY Homemade Vanilla Extract is really quite easy and you will only need a jar, a vanilla bean, and a type of alcohol. For this recipe, we will be using Vodka. Vodka will do the extracting but leaves no extra flavor in the vanilla. In our research, we found you can make “specialty vanilla” by using other kinds of alcohol to get different flavors. We are good with the plain, old-fashioned vanilla flavor for now.

To make your DIY Homemade Vanilla Extract you will need:

Vanilla beans

1 bottle of Vodka

1 clean jar

This picture shows a vanilla bean cut in two pieces. This is the vanilla bean used to make DIY Homemade Vanilla Extract.

This picture shows a bottle of Vodka used to make DIY Homemade Vanilla Extract.

At this point, you should note, that there are no amounts on the recipe, that is because it all depends on the size jar you have and how many vanilla beans you have.

Our DIY Homemade Vanilla Extract was made with only one vanilla bean cut in two. The original glass jar that the bean came in provided the jar, once it was clean and dry. As we do not drink we had to buy the bottle of Vodka specially for our herbal tinctures so we had it on hand for the DIY Homemade Vanilla Extract recipe.

1. Simply put the vanilla bean or beans into a clean glass jar. Again the number of beans you have will tell you how big a jar to use.

This picture shows two glass bottles with vanilla beans in them. There is a label with a start date and a finish date on each.

2. Fill the jar with Vodka. Make sure to get all the vanilla beans covered.

3. Seal the jar and put it in a dark, cool place.

Here there are several different suggestions on how long to leave your vanilla beans in the vodka. It seems the longer the better. One place we looked at said to just leave the vanilla bean in the Vodka and never take it out. So that is what we have done. Our DIY Vanilla Extract has been sitting around in the spice cabinet for about a year now. At some point, we assume the vanilla bean will deteriorate but that has not happened yet.

As you wait you can see the liquid turning darker and darker.

This picture shows two glass bottles with vanilla beans and vodka in them. The liquid is a very light color.

This picture shows a glass bottle with vanilla beans and vodka in them. The bottle is being held up to the window. The liquid is a darker, clear, amber color.

This picture shows a close up view of a glass bottle with vanilla beans and vodka in them. The liquid is a darker, clear, amber color.

This picture shows the glass bottle open and the two pieces of vanilla bean from a top view. The liquid is a dark amber.

And there you, are you have made DIY Homemade Vanilla Extract at home in your own kitchen. Oh, the wonders of modern baking and home economics craft.

This picture shows a close up view of a glass bottle from the top. The top is off of the bottle, the beans have been removed, and the liquid in it is a dark, clear, amber.

This picture shows a single glass bottle with vanilla beans in it. There is a label with a start date and a finish date on each. The liquid is a dark, clear, amber color. This is the finished product of DIY Homemade Vanilla Extract.

Now just store your DIY Homemade Vanilla Extract until your next baking adventure. It should be noted that this DIY Homemade Vanilla Extract may be stronger than what you buy from the store, so be careful not to overdo it. Vanilla, like Cinnamon, is great in small doses but too much can ruin your baking.

Use a cute jar and dress it up a bit and you have a great handmade gift. You can use it in DIY herbal concoctions and beauty treatments also, just note the alcohol may have a drying effect.

Go out and get you some vanilla beans and make your own DIY Homemade Vanilla Extract. It is better for you and takes less than the stuff you buy. And who can forget that blurb that went out a couple of years ago telling you what fake/artificial vanilla was made from?