Vanillka

So I'm teaching some friends how to make vanilla. This stuff is amazing and when I bake it makes my whole kitchen smell good. My wonderful friend Virginia taught me how to make it and she learned how from her husband's aunt who taste-tested a bunch of different kinds of vanilla (including Mexican vanilla) and found this to be the very best. She actually discovered that Mexican vanilla is often watered down since they know Americans are going to buy it. So this is how you make it. First you need the hooch. We use a Fifth of Stolichnaya Vodka, in the red bottle. It looks like this:

 If you want to feel like a really good parent, take your kid into the liquor store with you and then buy 5 bottles of it at once. Sure to raise some eyebrows. I haven't felt this insecure as a parent since the time I took Jack into Hooters when he was the same age. But I digress. So when you have the booze, you need to dump out just a little bit of it. (you're going to be putting the vanilla beans in it, if you don't dump just a little bit out it'll spill over.) Then you need vanilla beans. We use like 5 or 6 of them for the Fifth. They look like this:

I bought mine as Sacco's, the fruit stand place up here in my area. I don't know where else you could get them...I know you can get them online...good luck with that. So take each bean and use a paring knife to slice a line all the way down the length of the bean. Use your fingers to open it up just a little bit (Do this with all of them) and then put them in the bottle of Vodka. That's all you do at first! Keep the Vodka in the brown paper bag (out of sunlight) and shake it every day for a month. I'm not kidding! So after a month, pour everything into a container that you can pour. (Pardon my excessive use of the word "pour!") I used this:

So you should have the vodka and beans in this container now. Open the beans and use a teaspoon to scrape the seeds out of the inside into the Vodka bottle. Put the beans (that have been scraped out) in the Vodka bottle as well and then use a funnel to pour the liquid from the container back into the Vodka bottle. Give it a good shake and put it back in the brown paper bag. Shake it everyday for another month (I let mine sit for 2 more months because I still had some Mexican vanilla). The longer it sits, the stronger the vanilla flavor will be. 

Once you've let it sit for as long as you want it to use cheesecloth and a funnel to pour the liquid from the bottle into a dark brown bottle (I get mine at a health food store). A Fifth of Vodka is like 25 ounces so you're going to have quite a bit of vanilla. Make sure you have enough brown bottles. All of the seeds should be on the cheesecloth with just the liquid in the bottle. Still, when you use the vanilla to cook, give the bottle a little shake before you measure it out.

That's it! It's really easy, it just takes awhile but the result is sooooo worth it. I promise you'll love it! If you make it, let me know how it turns out!