Vanilla Castor Sugar

A headily fragrant jar of delicately flavoured vanilla sugar

Vanilla sugar is easy to make and adds a certain je ne sais quoi to all kinds of dishes; a certain special something that of course you know all about, but which may keep your guests happily guessing. I find I sprinkle it readily on everything from fruit salads (particularly those seaonally loaded with strawberries) to even using it in the occasional stir-fry, particularly one where your flavours are not very robust, such that you find the addition of fish sauce or soya sauce daunting. In such an instance, I would advocate instead stirring a teaspoon of marmite into the mix, and then strongly suggest that you substitute some vanilla sugar for the ordinary palm sugar (which is also anyway, in our part of the world, prone to damp and mould, which is yet another reason for using the drily fragrant vanilla.) So any slightly exotic, but mild, vegetarian-based dish, I find I am prone to throwing in a pinch, or maybe two or three, of vanilla sugar. After all, who said vanilla is only about dessert, and as Thai cooking has taught us, a mix of sweet and sour, hot and salt provides a wonderful combination.

Although there are a number of ways to make vanilla sugar, the most difficult part of it is usually sourcing the vanilla pods themselves, and, given the vagaries of the vanilla market, paying for this labour-intensive, hand-pollinated product. Vanilla, apart from its expense, is just the the most exotic of all spices, as it remains the only product that is derived from an orchid - how phenomenal is that? Long rumoured to be one of the key secret ingredients to Coca Cola (though both of the two people who know the formula in its entirety are "Laying low and sayin' nuffin'"), I consider the saying: "Plain old vanilla" plain old silly - it sells so well because it is just so delicious.

Vanilla Sugar: Populating with Pods

As with all flavourants, there are really no rules. You can make a heady vanilla sugar by populating your castor sugar with multiple vanilla pods - as many as you can fit into the jar - or you can eke it out in scant numbers, depending in part on how expensive or scarce vanilla pods are in your region of the world, or on how fragrant you want your sugar. You don't have to use castor sugar either - I do, simply because it then means I can use it in meringue mixtures with nary a care. So this is my preferred method of making vanilla sugar, mostly because it is simplicity itself, and although I put in as many pods as I can cram into the sugar, it also means the sugar attains the vanilla flavour remarkably quickly and, as you use it up, you top up with more sugar, as shown above. Should you need a pod of vanilla in a dish, you can use pull one out, dust it off and use it, though my feeling is that if you really do want to have any number of tiny vanilla seeds dispersed throughout your custard or frosting, then you'd best keep some aside specially for that since the sugar does tend to dry the pods out. If you find the sugar overly fragrant, there is nothing stopping you from adding ordinary castor sugar to your mix.

Vanilla Sugar: Ground Vanilla Interspersed Throughout

There is a second way of making vanilla sugar which has been popularised by Jamie Oliver, it was probably even his innovation, and that is to grind up the entire pod, husk and all and throw it into the sugar, which means a rich brown colour is pervasive throughout the sugar. Never one not to experiment, I did try this method, with limited success. Initially, I wasn't sure if my grinder had insufficient power (not the case), and then figured that perhaps my technique was lacking, but anyhow, it took a long time, the sugar became fairly hot and started to clump, and I still had to sieve it for relatively large husks of pods and then re-do it, nothing at all as simple as the demonstration seen.

But then I realised wherein the problem lay - the quality of the vanilla pods. Of course celebrity chefs on cookery programmes present you with only the freshest and biggest pods - which equates directly to quality, and I then thought, with regret, of the lusciously fragrant, beautifully brown, long, fat vanilla we bought in times gone past from a speciality Italian wholesaler in the Middle East, which simply exuded flavour. Unfortunately in South Africa, however, we are mostly presented with the lowest grade vanilla pods, short, stubby, darkly liquorice in colour and not softly crumbling in texture, in fact, at times I have even seen them sold individually in glass jars, not vacuum-packed for best effects. I do not advocate that low-grade vanilla pods be used in the making of this sugar, and even then, there are some places where I would not use the sugar, for instance, in a meringue, given such pod pieces. However, it does really stretch the vanilla pod to its maximal use, so for that alone it is worth thinking of, and I do note that many people like to add it to their coffee, and I guess if it is with the grinds then any gritty bits will be sieved out with the coffee. Since vanilla, when cooked in liquid, does tend to puff out and become quite glutinous, palatable, really, then it is only for things such as meringues that you would worry, but since this is my preferred method of making meringues (imparts the vanilla flavour without the addition of extra liquid) it is for this reason alone that I make but a small jar of the other kind of vanilla sugar:

Either way, once you have used vanilla sugar, you find it utterly indispensable. My first set of pods were given to me by my friend Illan, who had visited Madagascar where it is greatly cultivated, and I have been a great fan ever since. Although a native of the South American forests, vanilla is produced in a tropical band throughout the world. One of my favourite gifts was a jar of grapeseed oil in which floated a vanilla pod and which was given to me by Lizette and Marius in New Zealand and I found it was a delightful and light substitute for the melted butter that is used in the American breakfast pancakes, so with my current stash of vanilla pods I shall attempt such an extraction. Another benefit about using vanilla sugar is that it is alcohol free, whereas the traditional way of extracting the natural product is via an alcohol extraction.

Use whenever required, and sometimes even when not.