Flavor Techniques

Here are some additional tips on how to get more flavor into and out of your baked goods!

Making Your Own Extract

Making Your Own Extract

It is actually very easy to make your own flavor extract.  All you need is the whole version of the flavor you want to extract and an alcohol.  The most common alcohol for making extract is a plain unflavored vodka.  This is because vodka doesn’t contribute any flavor and evaporates quickly leaving the flavor behind.  However, feel free to use different kinds of alcohol to get different flavors.  For example, a popular vanilla extract using bourbon.  Bourbon adds flavor with the vanilla but it complements the vanilla giving it a more developed flavor.

In order to infuse your alcohol with flavor you will need a whole form of the spice or herb from with you are trying to extract flavor.  Ground spices could work but they will be difficult to strain and may change the texture of your extract.  You can use fresh or dried spices and herbs.  You can also infuse tea leaves this way, so if you wanted an Earl Grey extract you can use this method.

Step 1 – Find a container.  You will need a decent sized container (probably one that can hold at least 8 oz or 1 cup of water).  The container itself should be made of each glass (like a mason jar) or plastic (like an old yogurt container) but avoid plastic containers that are soft and may harbor flavors from past use.  For example, you wouldn’t want to use your spaghetti sauce stained tupperware to make an extract.  Your container needs a lid as well.  Ideally, you want to have a container that blocks out light but it isn’t a must.

Step 2 – Add the alcohol.  Add plenty of alcohol to your container.  Don’t fill it all the way to the top.  About 2/3 is probably good.  You need plenty of alcohol because your flavor will probably absorb some of the alcohol reducing the amount available.  Think of a tea bag.  After it has steeped, it has soaked some of the water.  If you try to infuse only a tablespoon of vodka with a tea bag it will only be absorbed by the tea.  Some spices and herbs will absorb vodka more than others.  A cinnamon stick is less likely to absorb as much vodka as a tea bag or a bunch of lavender flowers.

Step 3 – Add the flavor component.  Add only a small amount of flavor to your extract – more of less a tablespoon or two.  This is so your spice or herb doesn’t absorb all the alcohol.   If you take a fist full of tea leaves and place it in your vodka, even if you poured 8 ounces you just ended up putting a giant tea bag in there with it.  Some flavor components need to be altered for best flavor infusion.  Break up cinnamon sticks into two or three pieces, make sure your vanilla bean pods are split open, and rub and tear fresh herbs to help get the flavor going.  Speaking of vanilla beans, this is a great way to get the last bit of flavor out of your vanilla beans in a cost savings way.  Once you’ve scraped the pod one or two times your pod is pretty much exhausted.  However, some bits and pieces of vanilla still remain in the pod.  Use this method to make your own vanilla extract and get more out of that expensive pod.  This is how I learned how to make extracts actually.  The resort I worked at had a yogurt tub full of exhausted vanilla beans soaking in vodka.

Step 4 – Allow the flavor to infuse.  Leave your extract alone.  At most this should be a day or 12 hours.  You can do this at room temperature or in the refrigerator.  Since the alcohol kills off bacteria and such you don’t have to really worry about spoilage – however never say never.  Cold infusions in the fridge take longer so you’ll want to be on upper end of 12 hours. If you’re making a tea infusion, don’t worry about the bitterness of tea coming out.  Apparently since you aren’t heating the mixture you don’t have to worry about those bitter tannins from being released.

Step 5 – Replace the flavor component and compound the flavor.  After your flavor has infused swap out the component with a fresh or new set.  This is particularly important with soft flavors like tea leaves.  So all you’re doing at this point is step 3 and 4 again.  You’ll repeat step 3 and 4 about 7-8 times at least to make sure your flavor is good and strong.  There is an exception to this.  Hard components like vanilla bean pods and cinnamon sticks don’t necessarily have to be switched out as often.  You can have a yogurt tub of vanilla beans sitting in your fridge for a long time and you’ll still get stronger and stronger flavor.  So when you’re adding these components to the container feel free to stick 4 or 5 cinnamon sticks in with your alcohol.

Once you’ve compounded the flavor at least 7 to 8 times your extract is ready to use.  This is a time consuming process, so don’t assume you can get this done in one night.  You can speed things up a little if you don’t have the time.  Just make an infusion on the stove by warming up the alcohol and steeping the flavor.  You can speed up the process of flavor infusion and swap out the flavors and compound it quicker.  The flavor may be weaker and the flavor may change from being heated.  Just don’t leave your alcohol alone in the pot.  Vodka evaporates very quickly and you don’t want to be left with an empty pot sitting on the stove.

Although extracts are used in just about every baking and pastry recipe, extracts are best used to flavor desserts that have very little liquid content.  Cookies typically have hardly any water/milk added if at all so a stove infusion is out of the question.  Remember that you can infuse liquids on the stove to add flavor – so if you wanted to make a lavender whipped cream infuse the heavy cream on the stove with some lavender, allow it to cool, and then whip it up.  However, adding extracts is a quick and easy way to add flavor to just about any thing.