Homemade Vanilla Extract

Real Vanilla Extract is super expensive. The few months ago, I paid $8 for a 4 oz bottle of Bourbon Vanilla Extract and as of today, it's halfway done. I thought about looking online to see if I could buy vanilla extract in bulk from one of those restaurant supply, but found out I could make it by myself cheaper and easily.

Making vanilla extract yourself will guarantee quality and you'll know exactly what went into it. Your vanilla will be free of the artificial colors and corn sweeteners found in even high-quality vanilla extracts. Hand crafted vanilla extract is a great gift that will last a lifetime. Like a fine wine, vanilla extract matures with age.

Experimental Tart Dough

My very first try at making a tart!

 So I picked up these mini tart pans at Bed Bath and Beyond the other day. I don't normally make tarts. In fact, I've never made a tart!. It was an impulse buy.

What am I going to do with these mini tart pans?

Make a tart, of course.

I was fully planning on whipping up a small amount of standard pie crust dough to line one of the pans with, but while looking through various food blogs, I noticed a recipe on David Lebovitz's food blog for something he called French Tart Dough.

His French Tart Dough looked a lot like Cream Puff Dough (Pâte à Choux if you wanna be fancy) without the eggs!

His recipe calls for combining your fat, water, sugar and salt and slowly heating it in an oven for 15 minutes. This is done to slowly brown the butter and create a layer of flavor that way.

I decided to skip that and treat the recipe as if I was making a batch of Cream Puff Dough (minus adding the egg, of course). I quartered the recipe so it could fit one mini tart pan.

Small Batch Cream Puffs

Cream Puff with Vanilla Ice Cream and Strawberry Sauce

I love desserts. Then again, who doesn't? I'm serious though. Put any kind of dessert in front of me and I go right it, and have a hard time stopping.

No self control. It's such a shame.

If only I could make a small amount of my favorite treats without making a full batch and potentially eat it all.

Well, after messing around with ratios, I discovered I could in fact make a small batch of cream puffs.