Madagascar Vanilla Beans And Pure Vanilla Extract

Nothing beats a premium quality of vanilla beans when it comes to baking "Creme Brulee" or churning some delicious "Vanilla Ice-Cream". In this case choosing some top quality Bourbon vanilla beans would be a great ingredients to invest on.

A few months back I have received a pack of this precious "Madagascar Vanilla Beans" plus some other baking goodies from one of my blog friends, Gertrude from My Kitchen Snippets. All the while I have the intention make my very own "vanilla extract" and bakes using some good grade vanilla beans so this useful gift from Gertrude do comes in handy for my pantry.

In Singapore you can purchase vanilla beans or extract from some of the local baking stores such as Phoon Huat, SunLik, Bake King and etc. A good vanilla beans should be soft, oily and have an intense vanilla aroma.

Madagascar Bourbon vanilla beans are long and slender with a very rich taste and fragrant. The bean is cover with a thick and oily outer skin which contain lot of tiny seeds and strong vanilla aroma. In order to maximize the bean:-

~ you can cut the pod in halve, length wise with a paring knife.

~ scrape out all of the oily seeds from the pod to use for the recipe.

~ throw the leftover pod into dish which infuse with vanilla aroma or wash and dried it before storing with caster sugar to make vanilla sugar.

Other than vanilla beans this "Madagascar Bourbon Pure Vanilla Extract" is also another most commonly used vanilla among bakers and a small bottle like this cost 5 - 6 times the price of the normal vanilla essence. But I think it's worth investing a bottle of this to make a perfect Vanilla fragrant cake or pastry. I bought this from Shermay's Cooking School but you can get it in some other baking stores too.

RECIPES USING VANILLA BEANS AND EXTRACT

Orange Vanilla Loaf Cake