Homemade Vanilla Extract is the ultimate culinary act of recycling. In my home, none of those expensive vanilla beans go to waste. I use real vanilla beans in various ways. The whole bean is split and scraped of its seeds for custards and is used in my baking. The empty seed pods are sometimes ground up finely with sugar to add gorgeous speck of vanilla flavour to cookie doughs, and if I'm not making cookies that day, the empty pods are simply submerged in a huge bottle of vodka where I have been soaking other used vanilla pods. I sometimes even put a few whole split pods in the vodka bottle, seeds and all, to give it an extra vanilla boost. Reader, you must join me in my duty to spread the vanilla love so continue the jump for some cool ideas.
