Vanilla Vodka Recipe and Suggestions

This liquor is mighty tasty and easy to make. The ingredients are: real vanilla beans, sugar and vodka. Simple. The result is a strong liquor that goes down pretty smoothly.

Uses for Vanilla Vodka

I like to use vanilla vodka in holiday baking projects too (to enhance pumpkin, spice, apple and nutmeg flavors especially). The vanilla aroma really comes through and it adds richness to cupcakes, bread pudding, cakes, frosting and other pastries. I'll typically substitute a couple of tablespoons of vanilla vodka for the liquid requirement (milk or water) in a recipe and cut back a teaspoon of sugar or so -- but still add vanilla extract if the recipe calls for it.

If you've ever tasted vanilla vodka, you know it has a cold kick. It's tasty in hot beverages like coffee, though, and I've even mixed a little into whipped cream. It's very refreshing alone over ice.


Vanilla Vodka Makes a Nice Homemade Hostess Gift

With the inclusion of a couple of your favorite vanilla rich recipes on a printed card, this is a nice hostess gift. Leave a long vanilla bean in the bottle, tie it with a raffia bow, and you've made a gift with real culinary potential. I've prepped a bottle in the photo above. All it needs is the vodka mixture.

This recipe takes around a month to cure, but the wait is worth it. Once mixed, which should take around five minutes, a little patience does the rest. If you like to cook, bake or just experiment with beverages, make this one up and play with it a little. It's fun, and vanilla goes with lots of different ingredients. I plan on using part of my next batch in a cherry cupcake recipe -- just an example.

Vanilla Vodka Recipe

• 30 ounces of vodka (decent quality but not the best on the shelf) I usually use half of a 1.75 liter bottle of vodka (59.2 fluid ounces) for easy measuring.
• 1 cup white granulated sugar
• 3 vanilla beans (sliced lengthwise and then cut into small sections for maximum exposure to the liquid).

Note: Reserve a bean for presentation if this will be a gift, which would make four beans total.)


Directions for Vanilla Vodka

• Combine the ingredients in a glass jar with a tight fitting lid.
• Shake thoroughly to dissolve the sugar.
• Set aside for four weeks in your room temperature cupboard.
• As the vanilla beans release their flavor and seeds, the mixture will turn brown and speckled.
• Drizzle the completed fusion through a large coffee-filter lined funnel into a presentation bottle to which you've added a decorative vanilla bean. (The second photo here is a picture of a curing batch about a week from completion. You can see that it gets brown and rich looking.)

6 vanilla beans cost about $7.00 online

All done.

Special notes: Because I have leftover vodka, I usually make sweet lemon vodka at the same time. One is great with coffee (vanilla), while the other tastes very nice with strong, hot tea -- especially if I feel a cold coming on -- or it's cold outside -- or, well, you get the idea. I'll post the lemon vodka recipe shortly.

Oh, you can double the vanilla vodka recipe and make two batches at once. Just use all of one 1.75 liter bottle of vodka, 2 cups of sugar and 6 vanilla beans (8 if you want to pretty things up).

Last Photo credit:
Vanilla_6beans_Wiki.JPG Vanilla : 6 beans Photo : B.navez - 27 NOV 2005 (1,057 × 2,174 pixels, file size: 400 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vanilla_6beans.JPG