Vanilla Sugar
Vanilla sugar is ridiculously simple to make, and ridiculously good. It makes a great gift, especially in a pretty jar: fragrant, unusual, keeps forever, and can be used in any recipe in which you’d use vanilla extract. Buy plump, slightly soft vanilla beans for this recipe — it’s harder to get them chopped up properly if they are hard and dry (they will still flavor the sugar nicely, though). This makes a fairly ’strong’ vanilla sugar; if you like it a bit less pungent, just add more sugar.
— 2 cups
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Ingredients
- 2 vanilla beans
- 2 cups sugar
- (optional) 1-2 more vanilla beans for garnish
Making the Vanilla Sugar
Put sugar in a food processor fitted with the steel blade.
Split two of the vanilla beans lengthwise. Use a butter knife to scrape the tiny black seeds into the sugar, then chop the beans roughly into 1/2-inch pieces and add them to the sugar.
Process on high speed until the beans are finely chopped. The sugar will turn a delicate beige and smell heavenly.
Put the sugar in a tightly covered container for at least 2 weeks to allow the vanilla flavor to further infuse into the granules. This step isn’t strictly necessary, but it does give a stronger vanilla flavor to the finished mixture.
After infusing, sift the vanilla sugar through a fine-mesh sieve to remove the vanilla bean chips. Don’t throw the chips out! A teaspoon of the chips can be used for flavoring liquid-based desserts like custard (strain them out after simmering them in the liquid for 10 minutes), or the chips can be soaked in vodka for a month or more to produce vanilla extract.
Put sugar in jars or other containers that can be closed airtight. If you like, before sealing the containers, cut vanilla beans in half and put half a bean in/on the sugar in each container.
Tags: vanilla