I was at Costco, I had the thirty-five dollar bottle of vanilla in my cart, when the doubt seeped in.\u00a0 Thirty-five dollars!\u00a0 For vanilla!\u00a0 There had to be another way.\u00a0 I consulted The Googles while stalled in the coffee aisle.\u00a0 A search revealed there were pastes and concentrates….and of course I could have gone with artificial.\u00a0 But I’ve read where artificial vanilla flavors come from.\u00a0 It’s potentially really gross.<\/p>\n
I could have simply just bought the dang stuff for thirty-five bucks.\u00a0 But I’ve been cheap for so long that I’m pretty sure there’s no going back.\u00a0 And I’m not sad about it, frankly.\u00a0 I put the bottle back and continued my search online.\u00a0 And then I found it.\u00a0 The intrawebs said that bourbon or dark rum can be substituted for vanilla.\u00a0 My baking life was forever changed in an instant, standing there next to the coffee in Costco, trying to avoid the crowds of folks trying to get a free sample of this, that, or the other thing.<\/p>\n
I was off to the liquor store.\u00a0 I don’t know a whole lot about hard liquor.\u00a0 It was kind of a problem while pursuing ever higher levels as a sommelier.\u00a0 I don’t like spirits.\u00a0 To me it all tastes like flavored lighter fluid.\u00a0 Not a fan.\u00a0 Hubs, on the other hand, knows his whiskey.\u00a0 It’s kind of sexy.\u00a0 He was all excited to be at the liquor store…we’re not there often….but we were there specifically for bourbon, which is right up his alley.<\/p>\n
I was standing there with a blank look on my face, overwhelmed by the selction of bottles, when the sales clerk asked if I needed help.\u00a0 After explaining the situation….yanno, global warming is pushing vanilla orchids to the brink and causing prices to go through the roof….yes, vanilla beans do come from an orchid!…etc, etc.\u00a0 And we’re chatting and he pulls down a bottle of Jim Beam Vanilla Bourbon.\u00a0 What?!\u00a0 Then he turns around to the liqueur shelves and hands me Dr. McGillicuddy’s Raw Vanilla liqueur.\u00a0 My Christmas baking was saved!\u00a0 I got some dark rum, too, because rum balls.\u00a0 Duh.<\/p>\n
The bottle was more than twice the size and it was half the price.\u00a0 Bingo!\u00a0 This is my Christmas present to all of you…an epic baking hack.\u00a0 Merry Christmas to all of you bakers!<\/p>\n
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I was at Costco, I had the thirty-five dollar bottle of vanilla in my cart, when the doubt seeped in.\u00a0 Thirty-five dollars!\u00a0 For vanilla!\u00a0 There had to be another way.\u00a0 I consulted The Googles while stalled in the coffee aisle.\u00a0 A search revealed there were…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":[],"wprm-recipe-roundup-description":[],"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/IMG_20181213_150839877_HDR.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pagICo-1RR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7183"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7183"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7188,"href":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7183\/revisions\/7188"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.burnedatthesteak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}