Kitchen

[coffee drinker]

Costco now has 16 oz bottle of pure vanilla for $9.99.  Quite a change from prices 1 or 2 years ago.

[Bookplate]

I make my own - I buy a small bottle of cheap vodka, and a couple of vanilla beans.  Cut the beans in half the long way and scrape the insides a bit and put them all into the vodka bottle.  In a fewmonths you have extract.  If you bake a lot it is worth doing.

[Effie54]

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@coffee drinker wrote:

Costco now has 16 oz bottle of pure vanilla for $9.99.  Quite a change from prices 1 or 2 years ago.

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I think it's a pretty good price considering its size. McCormick vanilla is much more expensive for the same thing. I just bought a fresh bottle of Costco vanilla last week. 

[coffee drinker]

@Bookplate  I make my own, too.  Started when vanilla was soooo unaffordable.  Now I have vanilla up the wazoo.  Hope I don't get banned for that.  

[Rockycoast]

We make our own also. Have been doing it for years. So easy to do. We make it in a half gallon jug. Pour into a smaller sized bottle to keep in the pantry. Refill when needed.

[gardenman]

The cost of vanilla beans always scares me away from making my own. And the quality of beans can vary fairly wildly. Sometimes they're so dried up they just crumble. I buy the Watkins pure vanilla extract from Amazon when I need it. It's pretty affordable and tastes great. It typically sells for around $1+ per ounce, so it's not absurdly expensive. (Some brands sell for $5 an ounce.)

[River Song]

I made my own vanilla extract using vanilla beans from Costco and bourbon.  The bourbon provides more depth of flavor than vodka. The hard part was finding a tall enough jar to accommodate the length of the vanilla beans.  I used ten vanilla beans so trying to stuff them all in a bourbon bottle wasn't going to work.  I didn't bother splitting the beans open, I put the whole beans in the bourbon and let it sit for a while.  Came out better than any store bought vanilla extract, including Costco's brand.  

[Bookplate]

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@River Song wrote:

I made my own vanilla extract using vanilla beans from Costco and bourbon.  The bourbon provides more depth of flavor than vodka. The hard part was finding a tall enough jar to accommodate the length of the vanilla beans.  I used ten vanilla beans so trying to stuff them all in a bourbon bottle wasn't going to work.  I didn't bother splitting the beans open, I put the whole beans in the bourbon and let it sit for a while.  Came out better than any store bought vanilla extract, including Costco's brand.  

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@River Song Thanks for the tip about the bourbon!

[luvmyteddy4]

I got some Mexican vanilla that I bought by mistake one year but I really like it. It was much cheaper too.

[bells4me]

My friend gets me Mexican vanilla when she visits family.