How to make vanilla sugar at home

How to make vanilla sugar? Someone will ask: why? He is sold in every seedy store. I do not argue. Only in a bag is that sugar soaked in an artificial substitute for natural vanilla.

Let's make real vanilla sugar on our own, without the use of chemistry or surrogates. In addition, if you ever try such a thing, I assure you will not look in the direction of those bags. This magical fragrance can be called divine. And try adding such sugar to your morning coffee. And then let's look at your skepticism.

What do you need?

We will need tools:

• sharp thin knife
• absolutely clean board
• the spoon
• glass bowl
• coffee grinder or blender
• at least 1 liter clean, dry glass jar with a sealed lid

Of the ingredients you will need:

• real vanilla pod
• 700 g of the simplest white sugar

If you don’t need to choose sweets (sugar is the same everywhere), then you need to be able to choose the right good vanilla pod. What you should pay attention to:

1. Length. It should be at least 20 cm. Ideally, 24-26 cm.
2. Color. Dark, brown, almost black are signs of good quality goods. Light tones of a brown tint are an indicator of poor spice.
3. There must be a hook on the tip.
4. Feel the vanilla. It should be flexible, as if oily. A dry, non-bending pod indicates either counterfeiting or improper storage.
5. A whitish coating of crystals on the surface is welcome. This suggests that the pods were properly dried and stored under appropriate conditions.

Very well proven vanilla pods in individual packaging. In particular, sealed glass flasks retain the whole aroma and structure quite well and for a long time.

You can not bother, but take what is on sale. But you do it for yourself! So look for good raw materials.

Procedure

First you need to get the seeds. A sharp thin knife cut the pod on only one side. Inside there should be an oily black mass of grainy consistency. This is our prey. Gently transfer it to a glass bowl, add 100 g of sugar. Now grind the resulting mixture until smooth with a spoon.

Basically, vanilla sugar is ready for use the next day. But such a volume will end very quickly, but we need a lot. Therefore, we continue to make a long-playing blank. Carefully cut the pod into pieces about 3-5 cm in size. Place one piece in a coffee grinder or blender, add 50-80 g of sugar. Grind as small as possible. Now you need to mix the resulting mass with the rest of the sugar. Including the one that was ground with seeds before that.

Pour the mixture into the prepared glass jar. There we put pieces of chopped vanilla pod. Close the container tightly with a sealed lid, remove it into a dark, warm, dry place. For example, in the kitchen cabinet. Leave for 7 days. Once a day, vigorously shake the jar without opening.

After this time, open the jar and ... fall into ecstasy from the magnificent aroma of vanilla! Sugar is ready to eat.

Important! Do not wash vanilla! This procedure will remove most of the crystals from the surface of the pod. The aroma will be weaker.

Some useful tips

1. You can not cut the pods into pieces at all, but put them in a jar as a whole. If only the height of the can was enough. Sugar is infused with aroma anyway. But the seeds are best taken out anyway. They can be used for making sauces or baking.
2. By the way, you can not choose vanilla pods by smell when buying.They have a very interesting amber that not everyone likes. Only cut it gives the very flavor that has already become a byword.
3. And remember: a quality vanilla pod cannot be cheap. This is a very rare and expensive spice that is prepared and dried for a long time before sale.
4. In the future, after using the vanilla mixture, you just have to pour new granulated sugar into the jar and periodically shake the jar. Such a blank will provide you with aromatic sweetness for a long time, because the natural vanilla pod gives off a smell for several years.
5. Sometimes it is very difficult to remove all the seeds from the pod with an ordinary knife, they are very small. In this case, you can use a special butter knife. He has a rounded tip, which will allow you to easily clean out absolutely all the seeds to a single one.
6. Another method involves using pure sugar and a regular spoon. You just need to pour crystals into the pod and rub them with a cutlery. Then, with the same spoon, sugar is removed. Together with it, all the seeds are perfectly removed.
7. If you are not lucky to find good quality natural vanilla, then buy what is on sale. Even improperly stored pods flavor sugar well enough. Of course, the smell will be slightly weaker. But, if until that moment you were sniffing only artificial vanillin from sachets, then even in this case you will feel a noticeable difference.
8. All tools must be absolutely dry and clean, without extraneous odors. Otherwise, sugar will absorb this unnecessary, and you will eat vanilla rolls and sausage or cheese.
9. Some sources recommend using such proportions: for 500 g of sugar, take 5 pods of natural vanilla. We believe that this is an unacceptable overspending of the most valuable spice. This amount of flavoring is enough to make 2.5 kg of natural vanilla sugar at the same time! Plus then a new portion will still be added to the bank.
10. By the way, this spice has a stunning aroma and, alas, a bitter taste. Therefore, overdoing it is not worth it. Sugar will smell divine, but you won’t have to use it. Bitterness will kill all your efforts.

How to make vanilla sugar? Now you know what is needed for this, and you can often delight household members with wonderful pastries, the smell of which they will never forget.

Video: how to make vanilla sugar