I love to make homemade gifts and usually work at it throughout the year, especially with canning up summer’s bounty. To “mix it up a bit” (pun intended), I decided to make a few elixirs and extracts to give as gifts this year, too.
If you’re planning on giving homemade vanilla extract for Christmas or more potent potables like infused liqueurs, you will need a head start of anywhere from two weeks to two months.
Better get crackin’. Christmas will be here before you know it.
Toni at Boulder Locavore has sooo many lethal infusions to make. Check out her 26 Infusions and Liqueurs. At Common Sense Homesteading, you can find out how to make your own vanilla, almond, and lemon extracts.
Here is my rendition for vanilla extract (compiled from a few different sources).
Vanilla Extract
from Eliot’s Eats10 vanilla beans
750 ml inexpensive vodka (70-90 proof) in a glass bottleChop or break the beans into 1/2 inch pieces. Place chopped beans in the vodka bottle. (If your cheap booze comes in a plastic bottle, transfer to a quart jar.)
Place in a cool dark location and shake the bottle once a day for a month.
Filter extract if desired. Pour into individual sterilized bottles for gifting.
I ordered my beans from Amazon.
This photo is from the Amazon site.
Click here for link. I am making different varieties of vanilla for gift giving using these different Madagascar beans.
For my first batch, I used the bourbon planifolia vanilla beans. (That little bottle is from a kit I made last year.) I also received 10 Tahitian vanilla beans and 10 more of the bourbon plinifolia. I can make two more bottles. Whoo hoo!
I will have to do my best to remember to shake it once a day. (If you think about it, please remind me.)
The chopped beans make me think if tequila worms.
Just sayin….
Stay tuned for some more elixir recipes that you can prepare for Christmas gifts.
Before I leave today, I wanted to show you what this elixir looked like after just one day.
I feel so exciting to be referred to as ‘lethal’; thanks for a great start to the day! I love DIY anything and will confess I’ve never made Vanilla Extract. I did make Vanilla Vodka which I suspect is really a less concentrated version of extract. Love getting a jump on the holidays; thanks for this ‘how to’!
And you know I meant that with much love, right? Thanks for the inspiration!
I love to make my own vanilla extract too. I didn’t shake it daily, only once in a while and it turned out great too.
It remains to be seen if it will get shaken daily. Like I said, I will need reminders. 🙂
Great Christmas gifts! Nothing like a home made gift (and a yummy one ) like this to put a smile on your face!
I will have to put some of this back for my own use!
That is a brilliant idea! Homemade is so much better 😀
Cheers
Choc Chip Uru
Thanks, Uru. I cannot believe how it is visibly darker each day.
I would be thrilled with a gift like this. You are so smart to think so far ahead!
I love Christmas and work all year at thinking and making gifts (although that doesn’t mean I don’t leave a lot to the last minute).
I would love to see the little bottles in which you gift it!
mae at maefood.blogspot.com
I re-purpose a lot of glass containers. I don’t know exactly what I’ll use yet. Will definitely keep you posted. 🙂
I can sincerely say that homemade gifts are my favorite and apart from the ones that come from my boys hands :), foodie gifts are DA BEST! I would simply be delighted with this vanilla infusion. Great idea.
Thank you, Kelly. I guess I need to definitely make some more bottles.
I had a vanilla extract ‘kit’ I bought here from a vocal vendor and made up a few years ago. It was fun to do-although I frequently forgot to shake it. 😉
I found a couple on sale last year (hence the cute little bottle with the stopper). I reused the beans in those kits twice. With all my elixirs setting on the cabinet, I am doing a pretty good job shaking them up daily.
My niece gave me a bottle of homemade vanilla extract for Christmas last year and I’m still enjoying it! Makes a great gift!
I hope mine turns out as good!
Don’t forget to shake that bottle! I make my own vanilla some years and one of the fun ways I change it up when I make more than one bottle – is that I add 2 chili peppers to one of the bottle to make spicy vanilla – mostly for chocolate cakes or brownies…………you should try it!
That is an awesome idea. What about a chipotle b/c I love chipotle-chocolate combinations!
That sounds good too!