How to Make your Own Vanilla Extract

Happiness to Charlie Brown and the Gang is:

finding a pencil.

Pizza with sausage.

Telling the time.

Happiness is learning to whistle.

Tying your shoe for the very first time.

Happiness for Bake Happy Blogger is:

Having a sister

Sharing Bulgogi

Pouring vanilla extract onto a cake batter without a care in the world.

Yeah, it is a total luxury to have Vanilla Extract and pour not just a teaspoon or two in your recipe. That's why I envy Chef Michael Smith, that lucky guy! He's got this big bottle of homemade vanilla extract that he just pours in total abandon when he's making a cake. Never measuring how much he's put into his batter. Ohhh that's the life!


You see, I always buy from The Vanilla Bean Company for my vanilla extract and vanilla bean needs. Unfortunately, I always run out of the extract so I have to go out and buy some again. So I decided, I might save money if I make my own vanilla extract using their beans. Plus, that will allow me to live my dream of pouring vanilla extract into my batter like there's no tomorrow. Like Chef Michael.

So here I am on my kitchen with a bottle of vodka and vanilla beans.


Homemade Vanilla Extract
adapted from allrecipes.com


Ingredients:
1 liter Vodka
15 pcs Vanilla Beans

Procedure:
(1) Split vanilla beans into two, leaving an inch "unsplit" so they're still connected.

(2) Place all beans onto a 1-liter jar

(3) Pour Vodka

(4) Give it a good shake every week and on the third week, extract is soo ready at my disposal. Bwahahahaha! :) Can't wait.

Cupcake Baking 101: Vanilla Cupcakes with a Secret Ingredient!

Hi! Are you ready to bake cupcakes with me?

I am assuming you have stayed with me and learned all about cupcake baking basics.  If not, I do hope you visit Bake Happy’s Tutorials Page so you won’t miss out on all the fun.

We now move on to baking cupcake bases. By bases, I mean we will learn to bake the basic and most well liked of cupcake flavors – chocolate and vanilla. These cupcake flavors are the foundation of most of the cupcake flavors we can possibly make. 

For this post, we zoom in on vanilla. I just recently said I love mint, but I love chocolate as well. And crema de fruta, and tiramisu. And I could not just not include vanilla in the list. That would be an injustice to the silent beauty that is vanilla.

You know what, being a baker, most people would assume that I have that one flavor, that one baked good that tops all the rest. I dread being asked that question. What you’ll get from me is a blank nervous, wide eyed stare. Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer. 

And when I discover a new favorite (like when I discovered baklava), I don’t discard an old favorite to make room for the new one. My heart just expands…erm,  grows (or technically, should it be the stomach?). Is this how moms with two or more kids feel like? 

I love the little vanilla beans in this cupcake. Heaven.

So back to the topic. I love vanilla and I have something special to share. A secret that will change your life forever…not. 

Here’s my Vanilla Cupcake recipe. It’s a combination of three recipes really. 

I got the - 

• Ingredients from I Like You by Amy Sedaris (Tattletail’s Vanilla Cupcakes)

• Secret ingredient from Confections of a Closet Master Baker (Golden Eggs) 

• Procedure from Retro Desserts (Diner Style Strawberry Shortcake)

Vanilla Cupcakes

Adapted from I Like You/Retro Desserts/Confections of a Closet Master Baker

375F

Ingredients

1 ½  cups unsalted butter

1 ¼ cup milk

1 ½ cup sugar (if you have vanilla sugar, that would be nice)

2 eggs

2 ½ cake flour

2 ½ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

½ tsp nutmeg (secret ingredient)

2 tsp vanilla extract and / or 1 vanilla pod 

Procedure


Line cupcake pan with paper cups.
Preheat oven.
In a saucepan, bring milk and butter (if using vanilla beans, add them here) to a boil. Remove from heat and cool.

In a large bowl, sift or dry whisk flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg.
In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until pale yellow, fluffy and double in volume.
While still beating, add the butter/milk mixture.

Fold in the flour mixture (if using  vanilla extract mix it into the mixture as well)
Fill the cups two-thirds full with cake batter.

Bake for 15 to 20  minutes.

The result: perfectly domed vanilla cupcakes.

These vanilla cupcakes are perfect. I just don’t know how else to describe them until my friend Kat  said.. her exact words “lumulutang yung vanilla”. Translation: the vanilla flavor just sparkles in these cupcakes. "Sparkles" may not be the right word but something pretty close to that. 

And that my friends, is a wrap.

Happy Cupcaking, 

Aikko

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Comfort Food Cupcakes

I haven't been properly blogging lately so now, I'm trying to tell the story behind the pictures.

This is for an event we have at the office. Since I am to bring cupcakes, I have the complete freedom to choose whatever flavor/flavors I want. This time around, I didn't want to bring just one flavor. But I don't want to tire myself either. So what I did is to bake two cupcake flavors as base and play around with the toppings, fillings and frostings.

For the bases, I chose the simplest yet yummiest of flavors, chocolate and vanilla cupcakes. As for the toppings, fillings and frostings, I did not just pick flavors. I want it to have a theme and I chose comfort foods - mine that is.

I thought of all the comfort foods that I love and tried to make a cupcake version out of it.

The vanilla based cupakes. The chocolate based cupcakes.

Blueberry Pancake: Blueberry filled vanilla cupcake with Maple Syrup Buttercream Frosting. This is inspired by one of Pancake House's specialty pancakes. It's my favorite next to the Banana Caramel Walnut Waffle.

Spear Mint Chocolate Chip: Chocolate Cupcake with Spearmint Buttercream Frosting topped with Chocolate Chips. My obsession with mint started when I tasted my first Peppermint Pattie. To bad Hershey's isn't selling those here :(. Cookies 'n Cream: Chocolate Cupcake with Oreos Buttercream Frosting and a mini Oreo on top. Oreos go well with everything! Don't you think?
PB & J: Strawberry filled vanilla cupcake with Peanut Butter Frosting and a Strawberry Preserve on top. Who doesn't love PB & J?!
Cinammon Sugar: Vanilla Cupcake with Cinammon Buttercream and Cinnamon Chips

Banana Split: Chocolate cupcake with Banana Buttercream Frosting, Chocolate Syrup topped with Roasted Walnuts and a Cherry.

Underdog Cupcakes

Made these vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting for a salo-salo we had in the office this afternoon. Why Underdog cupcakes? Today, vanilla is almost synonymous to "ordinary" when in fact it's the complete opposite. Do you know that the vanilla bean is one of the most expensive spices in the world and that wars have been waged in the honor of this heavenly spice? I don't know why now its definition is almost the same as "common". Hence, underdog.