Make your own vanilla extract

Castoreum. If this word does not disgust you, then you haven't heard the news! Castoreum has been used as a "natural flavor" additive in most imitation flavorings, including vanilla extract. Castoreum is dried beaver anal glands. Most people haven't heard this, like me, until I stumbled upon an article one of my fellow foodies posted an article about it.

I've researched quite a bit online just to verify this, and what I found was... just... disgusting.
Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/castoreum.asp
Parents: http://www.parents.com/blogs/dadabase/?p=12957
Food Republic: http://www.foodrepublic.com/2012/03/14/6-scary-things-hiding-your-food

So, yeah. I'm making my own vanilla extract! Very simple, really. Liquor, vanilla beans and time.

After doing some searching online for "expert" advice, I found various opinions on what the best liquor to use, the best vanilla beans, etc. Whatever. :)
I went to my local liquor store here in Las Vegas, Lee's Liquor, and decided on getting the teeny cute bottles you usually see on flights airlines they overcharge you for, except these were 1.99 each.
I decided to try 3 types of liquor, from left to right (picture above) vodka, whiskey bourbon and rum.

Next, finding the vanilla beans, which worried me. I do live in a desert after all, we don't exactly have cheap produce, and i'm too impatient to wait for Amazon.com to ship me a pound of vanilla beans i'm not even sure will be of good quality. So I called the first grocery store on my list, and voila, they had some!
Mind you, the vanilla beans in those fancy pants seasoning jars... I had price sticker shock! $9.99 For one bean in a single jar. Obviously, I bought 6 teeny cute bottles, and I wasn't about to spend $60 for beans! lol
I found my match in the sort of produce section. It was well hidden, but way more affordable at $2.49 for each plastic bag that had two beans. I bought them out.

This is my recipe (with the help of my southern belle 75 year old grandmother):
1 - 1 1/2 vanilla beans (just snap em in half) per 50ml bottle of vodka, whisky bourbon (or bourbon), or rum. Let it sit on your counter for 30 days. The longer it sits, though, the more flavor you'll get.


I'll update this post in about 3-4 months (seriously!) and let you know how each liquor/vanilla combination came out.

Happy Baking! :)