If you attend my baking classes, you’ll know a few things about me: I love to use vanilla, passion fruit, really good quality chocolate and heaps of raspberries. When it comes to vanilla, I try and source the best from small farms in South India. This time, I got a massive batch from Sirsi in Karnataka. I used over a 100 beans for the classes and I’ve been using these gorgeous pods in just about everything I bake ever since I got back home.
This post is the first in a series on TECHNIQUES on the blog (let me know what other techniques you’d like to learn?) The first one is is the simplest, and what I consider essential to almost everything you bake: how to seed a vanilla pod. I use the seeds directly into the cake and then plonk the used bean into a jar to make vanilla sugar or a bottle of vodka to make vanilla extract.
When you buy the beans, they should feel nice and plump. They should bend over your fingers and leave a bit of a residue on them. If they are dry, it’s going to be harder to split them and you might need more beans to compensate for the flavour loss in older beans.
Learn how to use vanilla bean pods: Take a plump vanilla bean. Lay it on a chopping board and flatten it with the back of the knife. Next, hold one it of the bean firmly with one hand, while split the bean with the tip of the knife with the other. Seperate them into two. Now, take each half and scrape the insides with the back of the knife. Use the seeds to bake.
Video of how to split and scrape a vanilla bean:
