How to Make Vanilla Extract

Pure Vanilla Extract!


Okay so this stuff is super expensive and I'm trying to raise some children in America. So why not make my own!

Actually this batch I'm testing on friends and family (but don't tell them).  I am making Christmas gifts out of the extract I produce this time around. JUST in time for Christmas present planning.. You'll need 6 weeks minimum to make this delicious stuff... here is how;

First you'll need to invest in some vanilla beans.  I purchased mine from ebay, and to tell you truth I'm not sure where else you would purchase these without breaking the bank!
There are different Grades for beans and also different types of beans.
I got grade B

Vanilla Bean Grades

When a bean has completed its curing the bean goes through a grading process. The Bean is separated from others according to length, color, plumpness, appearance, shape, and moisture content. The more the quality a little bean holds, the more it is in demand and hence the higher market value.

Most all varieties of Beans have this grading;
A
Whole, uniform, fine, fatty, oily pods. Deep, dark, chocolate brown in color. No defects or blemishes. Great aroma, flexible with good moisture content, about 8 inches in length. The finest of all grades.
B
Similar in quality and characteristics to Prime grade beans, but slightly less plump.



Then there are grades below those... buut... nothing you want to mess with when it comes to a pure extract, you simple wont obtain the quality in flavor, you mineswell go buy vanilla flavor instead of pure vanilla.


Now, I went through this company on ebay

Now I actually purchased Tahitian Vanilla Beans (a whole pound) and I went for the cheaper Grade B. If I had another chance (perhaps next year) I WILL be purchasing Premium Madagascar Bourbon Grade for a little extra money. That being said what I purchased was not bad, but there were a lot of very thin dry beans which don't make for a GREAT Vanilla Lemonade .. YUM

Now believe it or not Vanilla Extract is alcohol... again when I have the luxury next time I will be ordering premium FAT little beans and to make things a little more interesting I will be using some top notch vodka to make mamma (that's me) my very own stash! That wouldn't be so bad in some cocktails!

POUR-SLICE-SCRAPE-SHAKE-WAIT
Let's begin

No exact measuring here guys and gals... pour and plop method

You will need:
1 large Mason Jar
3-5 cups of Vodka (nothing fancy-I went for the cheapest I could find)
7-10 Vanilla Beans (Best you can find for your money)
knife
Music

*Fill that jar with vodka 3/4 full (just until you get all the vanilla in, then you'll fill the rest of the way)
*Slice the vanilla beans in half.
*Scrape the vanilla beans of their gold (like below)

I used the back of my knife so I wouldn't take too much of the pod with the beans!

DUMP- all the pods and the beans into your jar and fill the remainder of the room left with Vodka. The longer you keep these beans in there the better this extract will be.

You will need to keep this in a dark and cool area, if you have dark colored glass jars EVEN better! Sunlight damages important chemicals made for those flavor notes that hit your tongue.. so keep these puppies locked down BUT don't forget about them either. I set myself a reminder to agitate or shake it a little every week! 

Give it a minimum of 6 weeks... Mine is almost there. I did this around 5 weeks ago, and it is super dark in color and looks amazing!  Everyone who gets some will be thrilled. I will post an update soon.

Let me know if you will be trying to make your own homemade vanilla! 

XOXO

Rainbow Cupcakes - Happy Birthday James!

Tomorrow my darling young son is turning 7!
Where has the time gone?? Why not celebrate with this...

I'll show you how, it's super simple!

Last year for his birthday in Kindergarten we made some yummy cupcakes that he just had to give to his friends this year again!  I think they may have made him a bit more cool at the time and who doesn't want their kids to be cool!?
I think I found this idea about a year or two ago in a magazine and since then I will catch a glimpse here and there online. 
So I thought I would share my process with you all just in case you want to make some for St Patties Day, a birthday or just because. Now- WARNING... these aren't Sprinkles Cupcakes, they aren't "to die for" they are just very cool, and fun... I wouldn't make these ever to show off at a meeting unless it was for a cub scouts meeting...just saying that they are more cute than they are tasty :) NOT saying they aren't moist sugary cupcakes, cause they are... but once you dowse food coloring into all that cake mix, it tastes well, like food colored cake mix! I have nothing against cake mix, there have been some amazing things conjured from it (i.e. ArtsyAlcie YUM!!!!) and the occasional german chocolate mix and frosting... WAIT I'm veering from the point...My point is these are GREAT kids please'rs, kids will be talking about them for months!!!!

So I started with these

1 box betty crocker white cake mix (white only because we are trying for some solid colors)
1 tub of cream cheese frosting (get the kind you like)
green "sprinkles" from wilton
1/3 cup applesauce (YES, applesauce!)
3 egg whites
1 1/4 cup water
7 cups
7 small spoons
large mixing bowl
wooden spoon or whisk
Gel food coloring (you can use what you have on hand)
****
red
blue
green
yellow
pink (not necessary for the full rainbow affect)

...and NO OIL!
"BUT why no oil Jessica"? Because we used applesauce sillies!   HELLO, this cuts down on fat MUCHO. It calls for 1/3 cup oil, but we substitute with applesauce for that moisture leaving an oil free cake, MAMMA likes and has been doing it for years!!!  You can use that in most of your baking recipes!!!!
I wouldn't leave the oil out of a chewy brownie recipe though, some things you just can't mess with :)

SO, get that cake mix in the bowl, seperate those eggs, measure out that water and applesauce.

Good, now we are ready to mix WAIT--- Turn that oven onto 325...
..then just dump all the liquid ingredients into the dry mix. There is no science to mixes, they are made to be fool proof, although when it gets into the oven it's all up to the baking gods and your timer!

Don't mix TOO much only because we are going to be mixing colors into the batter soon and we dont want this batter to be beaten or mixed to death!
Once your batter is smooth and incorporated you want to pour about 1 cup into each of those 7 glasses.
I use gel coloring only because I have a big stock of it for my cookie business. But you can use what you have on hand. I love gel because it gives you a bright color without having to use half the bottle or more than a tablespoon and doesn't add further liquids! But these portions are small so you dont really need too much to brighten the batter up.

So start your coloring; red, blue, yellow and green are their own colors, but for purple you need to mix 1 drop blue to 1 drop red (you may need to add 1 more of each but play around with it one drop at a time). Orange you need 2 drops yellow, 1 drop red. Mix those in until they are a solid color.

I used white cupcake liners and I used 2 liners for each cup to prevent browning (browning takes away from the beautiful colors we are working so hard to achieve). The alternative to using 2 liners is to get those foil liners, those would be perfect but since I only have white in stock, thats just what I did and it worked wonderfuly!
After all your colors are mixed and you have lined your cupcake pan you want to start with purple.
PURPLE: take your purple and put about a spoonful in each cup, and make sure the bottom is completly covered (this can get tricky), I used a butter knife and swirled it into the bottom of the liners and you can try shaking the pan a little in a swirly motion.
BLUE: same process about a spoonful or two, on the next layers you will need to sort of lay the batter on top of the last layer so it doesnt just plop into the bottom of the purple layer. Be gentile.
GREEN: be gentile
YELLOW,
ORANGE,
PINK,
RED.
Keep in mind you wont be able to get a perfect layer of each, so dont spend too much time on trying to spread each layer, give a little shake (to your pan, not your backside) and move forward to the next color.


I set my oven to 325 degrees. I don't have a fancy convection or anything, just a standard 60's model GAS of all things, but Petunia has been good to me (yes, I have named my oven).

Put those cupcakes into the oven when it comes to temp and I left mine in there for about 14 minutes but I would check after 10 just to make sure everything is copacetic..probe one with a toothpick, and the toothpick should come out with a crumb or two.

how cute are those!?
Here is a picture of the side of the paper, you can see through them...it's a rainbow!!

the kids are going to LOVE these!!!
When they were cooled I just spread a thin layer of my cream cheese frosting to avoid sugar blow ups on the playground (I think Mrs. Bauer will appreciate that!), then just sprinkled the green "sparkles" thats just the color I happened to have.

..and I love how the cakes stain the white papers:)

So with the time saving luxary of a box mix, why not spend that extra 30 minutes to make a special treat for yourself or children so they will never forget their Birthdays and get those brownie points with their classmates!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAMES!  MOMMY LOVES YOU!!!!

XOXO

..questions or comments please post below!!

Valentine's Day Cookie Pops for 1st grade

Okay, okay so I have totally neglected you all! I am soo sorry.. I have been super busy just like you... but I finally snuck away to share some stuff I have been busy with! 

Before I get to my son's and my most recent project can I wish you all a HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!?

ANY SPECIAL PLANS? 

My husband and I never make special plans, not because we hate each other or anything, but because we get super busy around the most important times, whether it be because he has come into a ton of work (which we love) or its party time at school.. blah blah blah..  :)

SOO, my son made some very cool Valentines Cookie pops for his classmates and teacher this year. I am so bored with the simple mass produced china made valentines they have at the store, they have no appeal to me anymore...or did they EVER?

SOO I thought why not bring the kids cookies!?

...I have had lollipop sticks hanging around for a long time and I wanted to make some for my little nephew's birthday party but just wasn't able to, SO we made these sweet HEART POPS ;0

With the help of my cricut expression and some simple shapes and cute paper, we also made the "valentines" to attach to these pops.
Now I want to share with you the process, I also want to gloat and share the fact that my son can now follow direction without veering too far =).. with little guidance my son did a GREAT job. He will be turning 7 this month. So if you have any kids this is a fun project.. even if its too late for valentines day, you could make flower cookie pops for Mother's Day... or perhaps some cute springtime Easter cookies... and if your the Irish at heart some green clovers.

ANYHOW enough rambeling ... we started with a fresh sugar cookie dough which we rolled between wax paper straight out of the mixing bowl (this is one of my biggest time savers, no one has time to chill the dough then roll it out with flour and then chill it again!).  Once James rolled the dough we froze it; TIME SAVER! Just look at this little stud rolling that dough! Not too thin james!!

I'll share my recipe and other tips soon enough, please subscribe to make sure you get that information!

NOW, after we froze the dough for about 15-20 minutes we started to cut out the shapes (freezing is another time saver but you could also forget about the cookie dough and still come back to it days later, hello it's frozen; it will last forever...well not forever just enough for you to get to what you need to do).
Once the shapes were cut we placed the lollipop sticks into the ends of the hearts, yes we violated the cookie dough something fierce, but so worth it!
Once they were all probed we slapped them back into the freezer for another 15-20 minutes. Oven is on and heated to temp, we put them into the oven for about 9 minutes. The key to the cookie is they not brown (if I ever refer to a cookie as burned it means I browned them: to a crunchy cookie lover my burned cookies are heaven) I only wish I could sell my browned cookies ;).
Once they have baked for 9 minutes and they no longer glisten in the oven they are done! Mommy removed them from the hot oven while he set up the tent for his Saturday night camp out in the living room, they sat out untill cooled. We had tons of stuff to do that night so we ended up icing them the following morning after Mr. Camper woke up.
So we started with our outline in royal icing colored just right.

Now I had long and short lollipop sticks and I've got more of the short BUT since we wanted to add a tag on the stick I chose to use the longer (I think they are about 6 inches).
So once we added the outlines we were able to use our flood icing and fill them up!

That's my little guy's chubby fingers :)
Here he is with the cookies

I am so proud of him being patient and of having the skills like his mommy :).. and he is VERY PROUD of himself!

hhe loves to show off!
So after we iced them we added our sprinkle of choice and allowed them to dry.
Once they dried I decided to use a small plastic favor bag and close them and tied red and white ribbon.


Here is a list of links on the things I used
Lollipop sticks
Favor bags
Sprinkle 1
sprinkle 2
ribbon
paper of your choice
tape- I used my new ATG gun (I LOVE IT) but a small role of tape or even double sided works!
some heart die cuts, contact me if you would like to purchase
heart button
apple brads
some ink for around the die cuts (makes the pieces pop)
glue dots
..and I think thats it.. oh wait LOVE AND PATIENCE!

I used wild cards cricut cartridge for my heart tags (I used the liner feature for the heart card button and cut them at 6 (I did not use real dial size) so it actually cut at a 3 inch heart...
James picked out an adorable polka dot paper and we cut out 20 something hearts.

we inked Rouge ink around the edges and I printed the "to" and "from" with a zig black ink and added some lines for James to print his class 'mates names on them. On the back I inked a white heart just to add an image since James wanted too :)
I have an adorable heart paper punch that I used to punch (avoiding our writing) holes for the sticks.

When the icing dried we added the favor bags and then tied a bow to hold that cookie inside there.

As you can see from the picture above we slipped the heart valentine on the bottom of the stick.
Then we worked on the teacher's valentine!  I have to say I was worried about his teacher this year since she seemed really strict, BUT it turns out it is just what James needed for 1st grade and we are on the same page with him and our passion to make James successful!  I <3 Mrs. Bauer!
So we had to make her heart pops special, she gets a bouquet!

I used NO template, just cut a long rectangle and swirled it together and taped it where I thought it would look nice ;)   FREE HAND boys and girls! Then I punched a heart in each side, threaded the thick ribbon through, tied a simple knot and taped the ribbon end to the inside of the cone just to make sure it didn't pull too much while my son is carrying it to school and rip out the punches. Oh yeah, then we added a valentine to the back

Stamped the cutest little elephant stamp with white pigment ink and James added his note :). I cut a flower from the accent essentials cartridge in a 1.75 inch and then the patterned paper in a 1.5, inked the outsides to make them pop and taped those together. Used that glue dot to add the button (it will NEVER fall off because of the all mighty glue dot) and then I add some pop dimensional stickers to put it onto the heart. On the back of the heart we put a small apple brad so that Mrs. Bauer could see it poking through the cookie pops and make her smile

..and ON TOP of all that simple crafting :) I cut the tops off a kraft box .. punched heart holes in a pattern and added a ribbon to opposite sides to make a carrying vessel for James' cookie pops :).

Now here it is, this is where I ask  you not to call me Martha because it is NOT a "Good Thing" it is a fantastic thing, and probably something that we will try to outdo every year now :)
I only hope that my son grows up to be a very romantic young man and takes the time to smell the roses and MAKES the time to treat his lady very well! (JUST to clarify he will not have a "lady" until he is 35+, he can't date until then)

Until next time which I hope is very soon, I'll say good day!

XOXO
HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!


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