DIY Essences

Does anyone else spend a fortune on vanilla or other essences?? I do! I go through them really quickly too because a. I use them often and b. the bottles are so teeny tiny. Therefore I decided to get creative and make my own!!

I had a big bottle of vodka in the cupboard which I brought for some reason that I cannot now remember so I decided that would be my liquid base. I mostly use orange, lemon and vanilla essences so those were the three I decided to try.

I had a pile of vanilla pods I'd brought off a lovely guy on Trade Me and I'd been using the seeds as flavouring for a few weeks and saving the pods. I also got all bossy with my males and got them to save all their orange peels while I saved the lemon peels when I made lemon butter.

Now comes the very technically part of DIYing essences :
VANILLA : I cut about 3 pods in half and stuffed them into an Only Organics juice jar and topped it up with vodka.
ORANGE : I firmly packed the peels of 3 oranges into another small jar and topped it up with vodka.
LEMON : I firmly packed the peels of 3 lemons into yet another small jar and topped it up with vodka.
Leave for a couple of weeks.


Now wasn't that incredibly easy?? And cheap! I found my vanilla started tasting vanilla-ery very quickly while the other two are more bitter and taking longer to develop a taste though it is happening. I'm pretty sure you could use bourbon or rum instead of vodka. Might give it a different depth but thats not a bad thing.

Give it a go and let me know what you think :)