A few months ago I went in with some friends to buy an order of whole vanilla beans. They’re so expensive in store, but if you get a big batch of them online it’s much more affordable. The first thing I made with them was vanilla extract. It’s so easy, just vanilla beans and vodka. I used this recipe and it turned out great!

Tonight I made instant vanilla pudding mix. It turned out, meh. It did have a truer (more true?) vanilla taste than the boxed variety, but tasted kind of floury, even though there wasn’t any flour in it :-/ It was fun to experiment though. I used this recipe which included powdered milk. I really didn’t care for the pudding, but it got me thinking what else I could do with this giant box of powdered milk we now have. This site had a bunch of interesting ideas, might have to try them out. Some are a bit more extreme than others, but again, it’s always fun to experiment!

At least it looks pretty :)