Fresh beans need to be steeped in a liquid ingredient (milk, cream, syrup…) to release their flavor, so they can only be used in recipes that call for such an ingredient, like sauces, ice creams, or custards. Perhaps some of you will wonder, if I have fresh vanilla beans, why use extract at all? And the answer is that they don’t serve the same purpose. So, why not use the former to create a better version of the latter? I was increasingly bothered by the imbalance between the wowing vanilla beans I’d splurged on, and the dullness of the store-bought vanilla extract I had on hand.

Still, I was increasingly bothered by the imbalance between the wowing qualities of the vanilla beans I’d splurged on, and the dullness of the store-bought vanilla extract I had on hand. (This is, in passing, one of the challenges the recipe writer faces: providing the necessary dose of guidance, but avoiding instruction overload.) When I first read about the process, the instructions seemed so fastidious that I shrugged and clicked away. The idea of a DIY vanilla extract has been floating around the food blog world for a little while.