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Vanilla Paste

Making your own luxurious vanilla bean paste at home easily surpasses store-bought options and elevates your ice cream making skills. This easy recipe uses readily available ingredients, including vanilla beans of varying quality. The process involves simmering, blending, and yields a versatile paste for sweet and savory dishes. The result is superior to typical vanilla extracts or essences, especially when compared to “cheap, artificial” supermarket versions.

Ingredients and Result

The vanilla beans your use can be grade B, preferably with some residual moisture. Besides the beans, you need water, sugar, and a small amount of corn syrup to prevent crystallization when storing the paste over a longer time, and to also increase viscosity.

For the sugar component, prefer monosaccharides such as glucose, fructose, lactose, maltose, trehalose, plus (rice /corn) syrup and the like. The main reason to not use sucrose is a lower GI or PAC, for health reasons and easier recipe balancing, respectively. Trehalose is used here because of its lower GI and sweetness, but feel free to simply go with table sugar and corn syrup.

Make sure that all the equipment you use is thoroughly cleaned and sterilized, to ensure a long shelf life of several months, when kept in the fridge. Pay special attention to the container you’ll store it in.

Also do not waste what is left in your sieve, but dry the residue and grind it down in a food processor. The powder can then be used to improve the taste of breakfast bowls and the like.

Inspired by this video.

INGREDIENTS

ℹ️ Brand names are in square brackets [...].

Prep

  • 35g Vanilla Beans (Bourbon) [InterVanilla] • 17-18 beans, grade B (or A), 12-13 cm

Wet

  • 140ml Water (cold)
  • 24ml Agave syrup • alternatives: corn or simple syrup

Dry

DIRECTIONS

  1. Split and chop the vanilla beans, removing any hard ends.
  2. Make a sugar syrup by heating the water and your sugar components at a medium-low heat until dissolved.
  3. Add the chopped beans into the syrup, simmer on low for about 45 minutes until reduced to a thick consistency.
  4. Cool the mixture, then blend thoroughly in a food processor or blender.
  5. Strain to capture all flavor and seeds.
  6. Store the finished paste in a jar or bottle in the refrigerator. The paste will further thicken as it chills.

NUTRITIONAL & OTHER INFO

  • Nutritional values per 100g/ml: 100g; 129.7 kcal; fat 0.0g; carbs 32.4g; sugar 32.0g; protein 0.0g; salt 0.0g
  • Nutritional values per tsp: 5g; 6.5 kcal; fat 0.0g; carbs 1.6g; sugar 1.6g; protein 0.0g; salt 0.0g
  • Nutritional values total: 280g; 363.0 kcal; fat 0.1g; carbs 90.7g; sugar 89.7g; protein 0.1g; salt 0.0g