Triple Vanilla Syrup

This Triple Vanilla Syrup only has 3 ingredients and is super easy to make.  Whip some up for your coffee today and ditch the chemical laden creamer!

That’s right.  TRIPLE vanilla.  I’m not messing around.

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I can’t believe that I used to think vanilla was a boring flavor.  When I was an angsty teen, I got in a tiff with my Dad at the grocery store when he wanted to buy VANILLA ice cream.  I was shocked and horrified that he wanted to get the most boring flavor of all time when there were things like cookie dough and chocolate fudge brownie and raspberry cheescake.  Oh, teenagers.  Please tell me I’m not the only one who had SERIOUS FEELINGS about trivial things like ice cream flavors.  I swear, I was mostly a pleasant child and hardly ever acted like a spoiled brat.

But how did vanilla get to be named a boring flavor when it is actually so exotic?  A pod that grows on a tropical orchid, which only grows in faraway places like Mexico, Madagascar and Indonesia.  It is difficult to grow, and although the food industry has tried to replicate the flavor with WOOD (ick), nothing can replace that warm, floral aroma.

I started making my own vanilla syrup a few years ago because I had a serious coffee creamer addiction.  I couldn’t drink my coffee without it, and regular sugar just didn’t do the trick.  My husband was slightly alarmed at the rate we went through bottles of coffee creamer, and kept trying to get me to kick the habit, which I fully resisted.  Finally, I decided to attempt to make a compromise and started making my own syrup.  It still has sugar in it, but at least has only three ingredients that I can pronounce, and not hydrogenated corn syrup solids, or whatever they are putting in coffee creamer these days.  This syrup + some half a half = a really great cup of coffee.  Which is maybe possibly the number one motivator for me to get out of bed in the morning?

I tried a few versions of the syrup before settling on this one, mostly because I really wanted my syrup to carry a heavy vanilla punch.  No wimpy flavors for me, please.  So we get the vanilla flavor from three places.  The first one is vanilla sugar.  Don’t have vanilla sugar, you say?  That’s OK, you will after you make one batch of syrup.  Vanilla sugar is easy to make, and great to have on hand for baking, also, Uh, THIS SYRUP, and for using in coffee if you ever run out of syrup.  Once you finish making the syrup, reserve the vanilla bean pods and leave them out to dry for a day or two.  Then throw them in a jar with some sugar.  They will infuse the sugar with their sweet vanilla flavor in no time, and there you go, you have vanilla sugar.

Aside from the vanilla sugar, I also use one vanilla bean, split and scraped.  This is actually important.  I tried making this syrup without a vanilla bean, and only using vanilla extract, and it doesn’t have enough flavor.  However, I quickly realized that if I bought my vanilla beans at the grocery store, my vanilla syrup habit would probably drain my bank account – those babies are expensive.  What I ended up doing is ordering them online.  They are much, MUCH more affordable, and you can keep them in your freezer for ages (as recommended by my pastry chef friend).  I wanted to use organic since I am soaking the whole pod in the syrup to infuse it, and I didn’t want any nasty pesticides to infuse into it.  I order THESE and the first package lasted me well over a year. I ordered my second package a few months ago and I still have tons of beans left.  I also find that ordering online means you get nice, plump beans instead of the dried out ones they sell at the grocery store.

The last ingredient is vanilla extract.  And yes, you need the beans AND the extract to get the best flavor.  I add two teaspoons right after taking the syrup off the heat, rather than after it has cooled.  I prefer the flavor that way, because it burns off the alcohol taste that can come with vanilla extract.

These three ingredients make for a flavorful syrup.  I mostly use this in my coffee, but it can be used a number of ways.  It is GREAT drizzled on plain Greek yogurt instead of honey.  You can mix it into earl grey tea with some milk or cream to make your own London fog.  You could drizzle it over fruit or ice cream or maybe even mix it into a cocktail?  Endless possibilities, I’m telling you.

Do you like creamer in your coffee or are you a purist who takes their coffee black?  What flavors do you like to mix with your coffee?

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