Remember the time I told you about sticking in the used pods of vanillas into a jar of sugar to get sweet smelling vanilla sugar?
Now, what if I told you that I’ve got you something even better? Something that smells more potent, something that comes with the gorgeous specs of vanilla caviar, and something that will knock your socks off! I’m talking about whole vanilla bean sugar. The word whole is critical here.
Normally, you would discard the pods after scraping off the inner goodness. But this time, the pods are ground to a fine powder along with the sugar. This way, not an ounce of vanilla is lost. (oh! I miss LOST and the island, but let’s not digress).
And how can you put this vanilla sugar to use? Just the same way you’d use regular sugar – in your baked goods, coffee, sprinkled over French toast or waffles (yum!).
Vanilla Bean Sugar Recipe
Adapted from: The Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver
I used two types of Indian vanilla beans to make this, 4 of each kind. I read somewhere that mixing different types of beans results in a more flavourful end product. To make this a more economical project, what you could do is make two batches of vanilla sugar – one that can be used for special stuff (or recipes where you need the vanilla to shine through) and is very strong (with 8 vanilla beans!) and another batch for your regular use that’s made with just 4 vanilla beans.
Ingredients:
2.2 lb / 1 kg sugar, caster or granulated
8 vanilla beans
Equipment:
Food Processor
Method:
- Cut the vanilla bean to make it two to three inches long.
- Add all of the beans and a third of the sugar to the food processor and grind to a fine powder.
- Sift the mixture and add the coarse bits back to the food processor with another third of the sugar and grind the mixture. Repeat with the last third of the sugar.
- If you still have bits and bobs of the vanilla bean left, grind it again.
- The first batch of sugar that you ground with the vanilla will be a lot more concentrated (and darker in colour), so whisk together all of the sugar to distribute the vanilla equally.
- Transfer to an airtight jar.
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{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Great idea! I love to scrape a vanilla bean into my chocolate chip cookie dough. Wonder if it would be overkill to use vanilla bean sugar in the dough?
You’re right. Vanilla bean innards + vanilla bean sugar will be too much.. But you know I always tend to waste precious beans when I scrape it out (do you?). I end up sticking it on the cutting board and wherever not. With vanilla bean sugar I won’t waste as much…
Something so simple…yet immensely versatile.
I strangely use vanilla sugar in a small fabric pouch and sneak it in my clothing drawers. Is that weird to anyone? I love it…the sweet aroma puts me in an immediate good mood every time!
Thanks for sharing the great tip about using the vanilla pod too ;o)
Flavourful wishes, Claudia
I bet that smells amazing! I’ve seen Ina Garten do this. I’ll have to try it sometime.
Jenn
What a great idea for the vanilla bean leftovers. I actually feel bad due to the amount of vanilla bean waste I’ve just realized I’ve created over the last few years.
Thanks for the info!
Foodhessa: I love the idea of making small pouches of it. I just went straight to my closed and put some leftover vanilla in it.
Jenn: You totally should!
Nick: Ha! Never to late
I usually just put a couple of vanilla pods in 1 kg of white sugar and just let it absorb all the flavors. This is another great idea though. Thanks for sharing!
Magda
I’m ALL over this!
~ingrid
Hello! Shaheen,
How wonderful to make use of everybit of this magic pod.Thanks for this post.
Hay, can you give some information about -How to dehydrate fruits like
cherries, peaches, plums, apricots and pineapples at home.
Love
Abha
I used vanilla sugar in all my baking, it it used in most of Swedish baking and i wrote about this that you can get vanilla sugar in Ikea and some people can make it themselves. But this is the first full blog post i have seen of someone actaully making it. Nice work. I am curious how this tastes to the Ikea stuff.
I’m going to be making some of this tonight and I can already picture how pretty it’s going to look and how amazing it’ll smell.
My last batch of vanilla beans have gone quite hard and dry. Any idea why that would happen in Bombay? I keep them in an airtight jar.
I’m also going to try half a batch of sugar with the dry beans. Hope it works out.
Hey Shipra! Yes Vanilla beans do become harder over time as they dry out. I have quite a few beans that look pretty sorry right now. You could still dunk them in vodka to make extract, just use more of them.
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