One of my favorite elements of Christmas is gift giving! I love to give gifts to my friends, neighbors and people that make a difference in my life. In years past I've always done caramel pretzel sticks, we still did about 100 of these for Tadd's co-workers, but this year I saw post on Design Mom about making homemade vanilla and knew I had to give it a try. I began back in November, ordering the bottles, labels and vanilla beans online. Within 5 days all my shipments had arrived and it was time to get to work. Turns out making your own vanilla is as easy as dropping a few split vanilla beans into some vodka.
That's it.
Really!
Oh, and it has to "brew" for 8 weeks! Yikes. When I handed my vanilla out, I just let people know not to use it until the middle of January. I wasn't thrilled about buying 4 giant bottles of vodka at the store, but I guess buying actual vanilla extract is just the same... right? (FYI, I'm a Mormon, and we don't drink alcohol, so buying vodka at the store just feels.... wrong.) Back to the vanilla...
Aren't these bottles awesome? And the labels? Genius. I love it! Thanks Design Mom... I put 4 vanilla beans in every 8oz bottle, filled the rest with vodka, screwed the lid on tight, and let it do it's thing, meanwhile shaking the bottles weekly. I purchased 24 bottles, I decided to order 1/2 lb vanilla beans and it turned out to be plenty for the amount of vodka and bottles I had, I even have about 15 beans leftover, I'm sure I'll find a use for them sooner or later. I bought 4 1.75 L of vodka and had quite a bit leftover. My bottles weren't quite tall enough to accommodate my vanilla beans, so I had to cut about an inch off every bean, I found a perfect use for the leftover bean pieces.... they went straight into the leftover vodka and made a giant bottle of vanilla for me! Tadd laboriously peeled the vodka label off the bottle.
See? It's just vanilla... no vodka here!
Photo courtesy of Harrison... I'm just so thrilled to give a fun Christmas gift!
All packaged up, ready to be delivered. It was SO MUCH easier than dipping hundreds of caramel pretzels! Now... if I could only ship Vanilla in the mail, I would send a bottle to a few of my favorite food bloggers. I know you would appreciate it!Prudence Pennywise (I've won 2 of her giveaways!!)
Too many to list!! Merry Christmas to all my online friends. You make a difference in my life!
7 comments:
I have thought about trying this too, but haven't done it yet. What a great gift Amber.
Ahh it's times like these when I wish I lived a little closer to you! Love it. Just a little FYI Donnie made caramel pretzel sticks today and was cusing the whole time.
Looks great Amber, good job! I do miss you.
Amber those look great!! You are so talented in the kitchen!! They turned out great!!
Wow, I think this is a great idea to do for just about any occasion. I mean, to have a couple of cute bottles on hand for whatever would be such a fun thing to have! Good job!
That is AWESOME! Since we live nowhere near each other, I will steal the idea and do it next year.
They turned out beautifully... I will have to try that .... Got to figure out how to sneak into the Utah Liquor Store....
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