Vanilla Sugar

Making your own Vanilla Sugar is a great way to flavour your cakes and desserts with the fresh smell of real vanilla. This method is very simple, yet it enables the vanilla to go further, as real vanilla pods aren't cheap. Its a good idea to buy Castor Sugar for this, as it is what most cake and biscuit recipes call for.

So all you will need is:

1 Vanilla Pod and

1 Bag (1 kg) Castor Sugar

plus a container of sufficient size to store the sugar in.

Simply take the vanilla pod, and slit it in half length-ways, with a sharp knife. Carefully scrap out the seeds with the tip of a knife and mix into a small amount of sugar. The vanilla seeds are a little oily, so this will help to disperse them thoroughly before adding it to a large amount of sugar.

Thereafter you can then mix the whole bag of sugar to the vanilla seeds, including the empty Pod, to the container. Better still, break or cut the Pod into 2 or 3 pieces first, which will allow the aroma to reach the sugar in more areas.

You can use the sugar as soon as you've made it, or allow it to stand for a few days to let the aroma to spread. Use sparingly for a faint scent in your cake and biscuit recipes. For example when measuring out the sugar for a recipe, you can add 2 or 3 tablespoons of your vanilla sugar before weighing out the rest of the sugar needed.