We had a lot of fun making our big Christmas present last year, and have heard many renditions of "how'd you do that?" After doing it, we can't believe how simple it was and how good the result is. Definitely a fun craft.
To make it, we started with two ingredients: liquor and vanilla beans.
We ordered the vanilla beans from a supplier on Amazon who sells them by the bag. This was much more economical than buying them at the grocery store (much much more.) There are generally two types of beans: Tahitian, which is supposed to be good for use as a bean, and Madagascar, which is supposed to be better for making extract. Our purchase of the Madagascar bean on the left came with some free Tahitian beans, so we added one in to our batches of 6 Madagascar for good measure.We heard that could make the flavor more complex, just in case we gave one to an undercover vanilla connoisseur.
Most people use distilled vodka, which we stuck with. But we did make just one small batch with bourbon, which we thought a few particular friends and family members would appreciate.
The next step was to cut the beans down the middle and stick them in the bottles.
After a little fun cutting beans, we were left with this:
What did it look like after a few months? The best part was the waiting and anticipation, so we're going to make you do it too . . .
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