Vanilla Skyy

After reading about how ridiculously easy it is to make your own vanilla extract, I couldn't resist. After doing a tiny bit of Googling, I ordered 4 Bourbon-Madagascar vanilla beans from spidercamp on Etsy. Very good price ($1.05/bean, after taxes and shipping), nice looking beans, VERY fragrant!

I have decided that I really, really like vanilla beans just for the fact that they're vanilla beans. And okay, so our vodka wasn't "Skyy", but just try to come up with a more clever title for this post!

Vodka + vanilla beans + 8 weeks of shaking & storing in a dark place =

I NEVER run out of really yummy vanilla!!!

All you bakers will understand how exciting and important this is, I think.

I read that any cheap vodka will work, so that's what we got. The most common ratio I remember from the sites I visited was one cup of alcohol to 3 beans. I had 4 beans, so I used 1 1/3 c.

Ugh, that looks REALLY gross!! lol

We have a few Gold Peak Tea bottles (which I highly recommend, if you must spend money on iced tea) and the bottles are wonderful to reuse for all sorts of things because of their lovely neck and tight-fitting caps. And because they're clear glass.

We decided to make it a couples affair, so Nick helped slice the beans, scrape out the pulp, stick it all in the bottle with the vodka, shake it all up, and put it away. So, we shall see, in about 2 months, how wonderful our vanilla is!