Homemade vanilla sugar
Homemade vanilla sugar © kvalifood.com
Video recipe - I use vanilla sugar in many of my recipes. But I have always been distrustful against that storebought stuff. So I have been experimenting with making my own. It turns out that it is better than what you can buy commercially, and as I use my discarded vanilla pods for it, it is practically free.
Ingredients
- 5 de-seeded dried vanilla pods
- 3½ oz (100 grams) of sugar
Directions
Put the vanilla pods into a blender or a coffee grinder. Blend until it turns into a very fine powder.
Pull out the finest sieve that you got. Put the vanilla dust through it.
Put the large pieces bavk into the grinder and keep repeating that cycle until it is no longer worth the effort :-)
Blend approx. one-half of the sugar.
Mix it all together in a suitable container. For example, an old vanilla sugar container. As long as it can keep the sugar dry.
1½ tbsp is about the same as the seeds from 1 vanilla pod.
Notes
Most recipes recommend that you take the seeds out of the vanilla pods. When I do that I put the pods into a glass, where I let them stand and dry out completely.
Depending on the weather and temperature they dry out in 1-3 weeks. When they are dry enough that they break when you bend them, they are ready.
It is important to use a very fine sieve for this. The blended vanilla pieces will swell a bit when they get wet. So this sugar is not really suitable where the vanilla is very visible. Like vanilla ice, creme brulee or pane cotta. But in cakes, pastry cream etc. it works very well.
It does taste the same as the vanilla seed though.
Usage
1 dried vanilla pod has about the same amount of vanilla taste as the seeds from that pod. So if you use 5 dried pods and 3½ oz (100 grams) of sugar then 2/3 oz (20 grams) of vanilla sugar will have the same strength as the seeds of 1 vanilla pod.
So if a recipe say you must use:
- the seeds of 1 vanilla pod
- 100 grams of sugar
You should instead use:
- 2/3 oz (20 grams) vanilla sugar
- 80 grams of sugar