I discovered vanilla paste about 18 months ago now in Sainsbury’s. Like many people, I’d seen Jamie O use it on ’15 minute meals’ and just decided it was some fancy cheffy ingredient flown in from afar; so I was delighted to find it in the supermarket and thought I’d give it a go.
Now, I’m hooked!
I absolutely love using it in anything that needs a little vanilla hit and the advantage over using an extract is you get the lovely little black specks of vanilla in the finished dish! It is never going to give as intense and fresh flavour as a freshly scraped pod, but in baking I don’t think you would ever tell the difference. The other advantage of using the paste is you are totally in control of how much you use. When using a fresh pod, it’s kinda difficult to just use 1/4 of a pod…
So, given that I love vanilla paste, I was very pleased to find this recipe from Foodzeit and decided to give it a go! The result is a paste that is every bit as good as the shop-bought version but at a fraction of the price. I used 5 Premium Gourmet Madagascan Bourbon Vanilla Pods from VanillaMart in this recipe. At Ā£8.25 for 20, they are excellent value and top quality too!
Vanilla Bean Paste
An intensely flavoured paste used to add a touch of vanilla to any recipe.
Ingredients
- 20g good quality vanilla beans
- 60g caster sugar
- 60ml water
- 1tsp lime juice
Instructions
1. Place all ingredients into a blender or food processor and whizz up until there are no lumps of vanilla remaining.2. Pour the mix into a pan and stir over a medium heat to reduce down. You want this to still be a pourable liquid; it is going to thicken as it cools, so remember to leave it a little runnier than you want the finished paste to be.3. Pour into a container and seal. I used a sterilised glass bottle to prolong the shelf life of the product as much as possible.4. Store in the fridge and use as/when required!
Details
Prep time: Cook time: Total time: Yield: Around 80-100mlIf you’d prefer to make your own vanilla extract instead of paste, hop on over to ‘Tales From The Kitchen Shed’ and try out the wonderful recipe there!
I'm a bit of a vanilla freak, okay a HUGE vanilla freak…. Never made my own paste though, will give it a go now though! Thanks…
Me too! Anything sweet, it's gotta have a bit of vanilla in it. Let me know how you get on š
I love the idea that you can use this to use less than a pod. I've always got pods chopped in half in the cupboard and they end up staying there until I need another half as opposed to a whole pod … which I never do!
Definitely. I've had 'half pod syndrome' in the past and always end up throwing it out or just chucking it in the sugar jar. Not any more!
What a great recipe, looking forward to coming back to the UK just so I can get some more vanilla pods. Thanks for the mention š