It is a given that chocolate is one of my favourite things in this world and it is no surprise that it is the key ingredient behind one of my favourite desserts to make and eat, going by the name of chocolate mousse. In my eyes I have the most perfect recipe, which I have made a thousand times over, and one of the ingredients is vanilla sugar. After becoming annoyed at buying the small bottles of it from the supermarket, which frankly aren’t the best tasting, I decided I would try my hand at my very own homemade vanilla sugar.
The recipe is simple enough given there are only two ingredients – vanilla beans and sugar. Shocking, I know. The ratio is 1kg of sugar to 4 vanilla beans and the vanilla beans should be nice and juicy, definitely not ones that have dried out as you want all of that fresh vanilla goodness to come through the sugar.
A food processor is needed for this one, and if you prefer you can start by placing the whole vanilla beans into the bowl and processing it for a minute or so until the vanilla beans break down. I tend not to, mainly because I get carried away and just chuck the sugar into the food processor without thinking.
To do things my way, place a little bit of the sugar into the food processor with the vanilla beans and then let the food processor run for a few minutes.
You will have some quite fine pieces of vanilla, but possibly still some large ones as can be seen here.
It may not look all that appealing to some, but I just love the colour and smell of it. Pass the mixture through a sieve and then place the larger vanilla pieces back into the food processor with some more sugar and keep going until you have used up as much of the vanilla as possible.
If you have a large food processor, mine was still unusable when I was making this, you can certainly add all of the sugar at once if you have the space. But even when using my KitchenAid, I still tend to do it in small batches but see what works for you.
Once you are happy, place the rest of the sugar into an air tight container with the vanilla sugar you have made and shake it all around to thoroughly mix it together. I also place an extra vanilla bean in the sugar just to give it a little more of a vanilla kick.
Yes, I am a fan of the label maker… you should see my pantry, it’s ridiculous
This will last for months and whenever you open the container you will get hit in the face with that awesome vanilla smell, something that definitely doesn’t happen with the store bought stuff. You can use this in recipes where you often use sugar and vanilla, but want to get a little bit of extra vanilla flavour by substituting normal sugar with this awesome stuff. I always use this in my mancakes and recently tried it in my waffles but it wasn’t as effective.
The other way to make homemade vanilla sugar is to just split the pods and let them sit in a container of sugar. You will still get the flavour, but it will be more subtle. And given how pricey vanilla beans can be, I like to get more bang for my buck.
If one kilo of sugar is a bit much for you to use, this makes an awesome gift as well. For example, I put some in a small mason jar and gave it as an engagement present to a friend along with a nice glass bowl and my chocolate mousse recipe. It was well received.
Should you like the sound of making your own vanilla sugar, just wait for my post on how to make your own homemade vanilla extract. It is still brewing so it will be posted in a few more weeks.
Ingredients
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- Place the vanilla beans into a food processor with approximately 3/4 cup of the sugar (or less if using a small food processor)
- Process for at least 2 minutes, until the vanilla beans start to break down.
- Sieve the mixture into a bowl and then repeat steps 1 and 2 with the remaining large lumps of vanilla bean.
- Once you are happy with the consistency, place all of the remaining sugar into the bowl and stir to evenly distribute the vanilla.
- Store in an air tight container.
I JUST ran out of vanilla sugar this morning and put it on my grocery list! I’m going to cross it off & try your recipe instead 🙂 It looks so easy; I can’t believe I never thought of it before! 🙂 Thanks for sharing with us at Tasty Tuesays; I just wanted to let you know that this recipe is being featured this week! Congrats 🙂
Thanks for the feature Anyonita! It tastes much better than store bought (like most home made things I guess) and I hope you like it as much as I do.
I think this is a great idea for gifts as well as to use at home. It couldn’t be more simple. Thanks so much!
This does make a fantastic gift if you find some cute little jars and certainly a lot cheaper than buying it for yourself at home. Thanks for stopping by Jeannie Marie.