Datalounge Bakers and Foodies

Wilton Clear Vanilla. It's fake and has a pronounced vanilla aroma. One or two drops will be plenty.

When asked for a food related recommendation I think to myself, what would Ina recommend? Here’s your answer:

There's a difference between extract and flavoring. Just get pure vanilla extract, not imitation.

Add fresh ground vanilla bean to your coffee when you brew it. It's divine.

^^^ *fresh-ground

Cooks Illustrated did a tasting and found that Baker's Imitation Vanilla was as good as the real thing, at least in baked goods. In coffee it might not be the same.

Not many vanilla-lovers in this thread, OP. Just get some vanilla you like and add it to your coffee a little at a time. You have the same choices everybody else does, grocery store or online. The vanilla industry has been in turmoil several years now, reducing supplies and quality while making prices sky-high.

This has vanilla notes and would be a better addition to your coffee than vanilla extract.

It doesn't taste like bourbon, though, r8?

Oh, my sides

I used to put whole vanilla beans in the percolator when I perked coffee. It infused the coffee with the aroma and flavor.

R11 This sounds delicious but expensive. How much vanilla bean did you use in each brew? Did you reuse the beans?

Take a vanilla bean--you can use the bean after you've scraped the pulp out for something else if you want--and stick it in a receptacle with sugar. You can use the vanilla infused sugar to flavour your coffee. Much more economical and you'll retain more of the vanilla flavour that way.

One bean will be plenty for one and a half to two cups of sugar.

I have tried a few depending on what store I'm in and what brand they carry. None were that great. So I thought I'd ask those who bake or like vanilla flavor like I do.

Just to be clear r13 you are saying to add the pulp to the sugar and use the bean for something else correct?

Many thanks everyone.

No, add the bean to the sugar, you can use the pulp for a recipe. It's a good way to use the leftover bean.

You have to let it sit for a while before you use it. Probably a week?

I put it in a jam jar with a screw-top lid.

R6 Yuck. Not this again. OP I like Ina's pick, Nielsen-Massey, but I've also bought genuine vanilla extract from Mexico that is almost as good, at roughly a quarter of the price. The Mexican brands usually come in much larger bottles.

Generally the Mexican varieties I've had lack the the floral notes that are present in others, yet they're still very good. Seems like perfect choice for your coffee.

Thanks to this thread, I used some McCormack vanilla extract in my coffee this morning. It was quite tasty!

That was the first one I bought and it was not good.

OP Try Watkins or Penzeys then if you don't want to spring for the Nielsen-Massey. If you ate going to use it e everday, and lots of it, perhaps make your own. Take some good rum or bourbon (or vodka) and infuse your own with either bean paste, or the whole bean.

Not being familiar with the actual bean about how much bean to ounces of booze?

One bean pod is probably good for 750ml of alcohol.

I tried it, OP, putting a few drops of Penzey's vanilla in my coffee. I won't be doing it again. I like my coffee to taste like coffee, and now it tastes neither exactly like coffee nor much like vanilla. It's just...off.

If you must do this, the vanilla bean people might have the right idea.

r25 here. The vanilla extract-infused coffee tasted even worse as it cooled down. I threw it out about halfway through.

Ok, so this sounds pretentious but I'm going to admit it anyway.

It was pissing me off that every time i needed a new bottle of vanilla extract (i bake a lot), it was costing $10 to get a new little bottle. Then one day I saw Ina Garten pull out a giant mason jar and she said she uses vanilla beans and vodka to make her own, and the jar of beans would last forever.

So i went on ebay and bought vanilla beans, from madagascar. Took like 6 weeks to get here and cost about $80 for about 30 beans in a vacuum pack, but i put them in a mason jar, filled it with vodka (i think bourbon-based vanilla extract tastes like vanilla flavored bourbon) and have been using it ever since. Takes about 2 weeks of steeping to be ready as an ingredient. It turns black during that time and man alive, is it ever the best! When the jar gets down to about 1/2 full, i just add more vodka. It has MORE than paid for itself.

Sorry, only read the first half of the posts. Didn't mean to be redundant!

R27.

or you could add vanilla sugar...

I haven’t had much success with the vanilla bean in vodka. It’s not strong enough.

r29 someone up thread suggested I get some beans and add them to my sugar in a screw top jar. The beans will flavor the sugar.

I'm going to get beans and put them in sugar and I will buy a small bottle of vodka (pint?) and add beans to see which works best for coffee.

Still voting for fake vanilla which has a more pronounced vanilla flavor and doesn't require grinding beans with sugar or soaking them for weeks in alcohol. I used to mix 1/3 Splenda liquid into 2/3 vanillin (Wilton brand clear vanilla), in a small dropper bottle. A few drops in my coffee and it tasted very vanilla and a little sweet. I thought it was even better in tea though.

You don't grind beans with sugar you just stick them in the jar whole.

I've read that Costco vanilla is good and you get a good bit inexpensively.

R30. Not ONE vanilla bean. You put as many vanilla beans as you can fit, standing them up. THEN fill in with vodka. I promise you it is NOT too weak.

Costco vanilla is as expensive as it is anywhere else these days, R34, about $1.50-$2.00/oz, due to international shortages caused by weather and war and vanilla bean poaching, and the sheer difficulty of growing vanilla. McCormick is trying to produce vanilla in greenhouses because they're sick of the unreliable market and quality. A bit more than a year ago, Costco stopped selling vanilla for awhile because they said they couldn't get a steady supply at reasonable cost. Then they sold fake vanilla for awhile, and now natural is back, but costs about $20 for a 12-oz bottle.

I was on walmart.com last night and noticed they were selling (well, it was a third-party seller) a gallon of vanilla extract for over $250.