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Welcome to day 5 of my 12 days of Christmas Crafting. Today I am going to share with you, how to make homemade vanilla sugar.

I love giving gourmet or specialty food-type items for Christmas. I find that it’s nice to give something a little different and it gives the recipient an opportunity to try something new. This makes a great gift for many people on your list and it’s so easy to make!

Some other foodie type gifts I’ve made include:

• homemade vanilla extract
• homemade lemon extract
• instant pancake mix
• Irish cream

What is Vanilla Sugar?

Vanilla sugar is simply vanilla-infused sugar. The sugar has a vanilla taste to it.

It is very easy to make – all you need is a vanilla bean and some sugar.

Uses for Homemade Vanilla Sugar

Vanilla sugar can be used whenever a recipe calls for regular sugar. It’s the same ratio – so you don’t need to use more and you don’t need to use less.

Add some vanilla sugar to your coffee or tea for an extra boost in flavour.

I like to bake with vanilla sugar. It goes well in sugar cookies, pound cakes and when I make a Dutch baby pancake. The vanilla sugar enhances the flavour of these things.

If the recipe calls for vanilla extract, I still put it in. I don’t omit it just because I’m using vanilla sugar. The extra boost of vanilla in the sugar makes it even better tasting in my opinion!

Vanilla sugar also makes a great finishing sugar for items such as muffins or cookies.

What You Need

• vanilla bean(s) – 2 vanilla beans for every cup of sugar.
• granulated sugar
• food processor
• air tight container

Homemade Vanilla Sugar

The key to the vanilla sugar is the vanilla bean. There are 3 main types of vanilla beans: Madagascar, Tahitian and Mexican. While they are similar, they also each have their own unique flavour.

• Madagascar – rich, full-body woody flavour; this is probably the most popular
• Tahitian – delicate flavour with light floral overtones; slightly cheaper than Madagascar vanilla beans.
• Mexican – very similar to Madagascar in flavour, but slightly mellower, smokier and smooth in flavour

I tend to use Madagascar or Tahitian as they are more readily available to me. Vanilla beans can be purchased online or in gourmet food stores. I’ve even seen vanilla beans at Costco sometimes.

Now what we really want is all the insides of the vanilla bean. Using a knife, carefully split open your vanilla bean, lengthways. Then you will scrape out all the insides; that’s all the yummy goodness! Some refer to this as vanilla caviar.

I use just regular, plain old sugar. The sugar I already have in the kitchen that I use for baking. I have heard of others using cane sugar. I’ve never tried, but hope to soon.

Add the sugar and the vanilla bean scrapings to a food processor. I like to use my food processor to mix my vanilla sugar as I find that it does a thorough job. It breaks up any clumps and evenly distributes the vanilla bean scrapings.

If you don’t have a food processor, I’m sure a whisk will do as well. Just visually see that everything is distributed well.

That’s it! That’s all you have to do to make homemade vanilla sugar.

Now put it in an air-tight container. It’s ready to use immediately but the flavours intensify if you let it sit for a couple of weeks. This makes a great gift as you don’t have to wait. If you wanted to make and give vanilla extract for Christmas you needed to start months ago. Or perhaps start now for next Christmas!

What to do with that Vanilla Bean Pod?

After making the vanilla sugar, you will be left with the empty pod.

I like to add the empty vanilla pod to my vanilla sugar. It not only makes a nice garnish, but it also reminds me that it’s the vanilla sugar (as opposed to regular sugar), in the event, I haven’t had a chance to label it yet. More importantly, the pod itself will help to flavour the sugar as well.

For gift-giving, I split this recipe into 2 smaller jars, cut the vanilla pod in half and add half a pod to each jar.

You could use the vanilla pod to make vanilla extract, but you will need some more vanilla beans – not just this empty pod. When making vanilla extract, you want the inside scrapings as well but since you’ve removed them, this will not flavour your extract strongly.

Instead, add the empty pod to some already existing vanilla extract to enhance the flavour.

I like to label my jars using my Cricut. You could do this in one of two ways:

• label with adhesive vinyl
• label using a waterslide decal

I think vanilla sugar is a unique gift that will be appreciated by my friends who like to bake. I can’t wait to give this to them this Christmas.

Don’t forget to come back tomorrow to see the next craft in my 12 Days of Christmas Crafting.

Want to remember how to make this homemade vanilla sugar? Be sure to save this to your favourite Pinterest board.