Stevia and Vanilla Extract

Trim Healthy sells these amazing extracts that are fantastic. They have a bunch of different flavors, which enables you to flavor your foods without putting the actual fruit or nut or bean into your recipe. Check them out.

Did you know you can make them yourself too? Get an inexpensive vodka and make your own extracts! I have stevia, cinnamon, mint, coffee and vanilla steeping now.

Different flavors need different steeping times. So find out how much time you need for the specific flavor and start extracting! Put your leaves or beans or sticks in a small jar and cover and shake every day till it’s ready. Strain and it’s ready to use. For stevia, some people heat it for twenty minutes, after it’s strained. Don’t bring it to a boil. It needs only two days, where the other flavors need several weeks. The reason for that is because we want only the sweetener, not the bitterness of the plant.

Stevia…..two days

Vanilla beans…. 6 weeks. (You can get them online for 1-2 dollars a bean.) Use 2-3 beans per cup of vodka. That makes a more concentrated higher quality vanilla then the imitation vanilla.

By the way, do you know the ingredients of your imitation vanilla? It could be water with paper waste product, coal tar, pine bark, or even cow poop and sugar and dyes and preservatives. It’s not regulated as much as the pure vanilla extract!

Cinnamon sticks…..6 weeks

Coffee beans roughly crushed…..2 weeks

Mint leaves….4 weeks

Cherries, strawberries, blueberries….8 weeks

Have fun making your extracts and let me know how you like them!!