Heilala Vanilla

Using Heilala Vanilla Beans

Vanilla beans - those pricey, fragrant, dried seed-pods that offer no easy clue about how to use them!

If you haven't ever smelled a fresh vanilla bean, you should. It is a wonderfully, enchanting experience!

Using fresh vanilla beans will give your ice cream and many other dishes a noticeably better flavour and heavenly aroma.

To cut open a bean, lay it flat on a cutting surface. Holding one end of the bean to the surface, carefully slice the bean open lengthwise. When you separate the bean, thousands of tiny seeds are exposed.

By cutting the bean open before placing it in a liquid, more of the surface of the bean is exposed, and the greater the flavouring properties. You can scrape the seeds from the pod before removing the bean if you choose.

Frequently recipes call for scraping the seeds from the vanilla bean and discarding the rest - what a waste! The entire bean is filled with flavour and, in fact, the pod has more flavour than the seeds.

Vanilla beans can usually be used several times depending on how strenuously you've used them. Rinse and dry the bean pieces after using them.

After using the bean several times retire them to the sugar or coffee jar as they will exude a delicate flavour and fragrance for some time to come or grind them up in the food processor and use to add additional flavour to ice creams, cookies, and many other foods.

Vanilla beans will keep indefinitely in a cool, dark place wrapped in plastic in an airtight container.

Don't refrigerate beans as this can cause them to harden and crystallize.

Using Vanilla Extract

Pure Vanilla Extract is a premium product to be used in any recipe that asks for 'Vanilla Extract or Vanilla Essence'. Vanilla Essence is a synthetic imitation and by using pure Vanilla Extract you will give your dishes a noticeably better flavour.

Store in a cool place out of direct sunlight and the flavour will continue to develop.

See our recipe section for using Heilala Pure Vanilla Extract in soups, desserts, cakes and cocktails!

Using Vanilla Paste

Vanilla Paste is a concentrated Vanilla Extract with inclusion of the Vanilla Bean seeds. It is very useful in cooking when you require the appearance of the Vanilla seeds. Once you have opened your Vanilla Paste store in a cool dark place.

See the recipe section.