It only take two ingredients to make homemade vanilla extract. It's so easy! You'll never go back to store-bought vanilla extract after making this recipe.

You can even find a fun cute bottle to reuse just like the one pictured here. Or you can use the rum bottle and add in the vanilla beans!

Ingredients
- 1/2 cup rum
- 3 vanilla beans
Other things you'll need
- Bowl
- Knife
- Cutting board
- Funnel
- Storage container
- Liquid measuring cup
Vanilla beans are easier to find than you think. If you prep ahead of time you can order them online, but you can also find them in Williams Sonoma or Harmons here in Utah.
The first thing you do is measure out the rum into a bowl. Then take the vanilla beans and cut it lengthwise right down the middle as straight as possible. Take your knife and scrape out the vanilla beans. Put the beans in the bowl with the rum.

Use your hands to scrape any remaining seeds from the pod into the bowl.

Pour the mixture of rum and beans into your storage container.

You'll want to let the ingredients sit together for, at the very least, a month, but it's best to let sit for 3 months before you start using it. Great news, it can last forever! It will never expire.
Here is a side-by-side comparison of what your mixture will look like right after you put it together versus what it will look like after 3 months. You can see how much darker the mixture will get!

Now take a break, put it in your panty, and enjoy some delicious chocolate chip cookies with your homemade vanilla in 3 months!
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