question about vanilla extract

I have a dumb question. If I omitted the vanilla extract in a cake by accident, can I increase the amount of vanilla extract in the frosting to compensate?

Can you? Sure.

I think the better question is, do you want to? Nothing is gonna fix the cake. It shouldn't be bad but it's going to be missing a dimension (or two). Doubling up the vanilla in the frosting will make the frosting very heavily vanilla flavored which may or may not be a good thing--but it won't fix the issue with the cake.

I think the short answer is no, you don't want to.

I agree with Gypsy-Boy, although if it's the kind of cake (sponge or poundcake) that could stand up to brushing with liqueur, you could add some vanilla or other flavoring that way (see what the pros knowon the link.)

Yep. Just make the frosting & move on.

I do like the What the Pro's know from Mhays.

My Spice House bottle of Tahitian vanilla extract is almost gone. Thanks to boudreaulicious I have a bottle of double strength vanilla extract from the Spice House so my coffers aren't empty.

I'm wondering can I recycle this Tahitian vanilla bean in any meaningful way? I'd hate to just throw it out when the bottle is done.

What do you do when your extract is done?

pairs4life wrote:My Spice House bottle of Tahitian vanilla extract is almost gone. Thanks to boudreaulicious I have a bottle of double strength vanilla extract from the Spice House so my coffers aren't empty.

I'm wondering can I recycle this Tahitian vanilla bean in any meaningful way? I'd hate to just throw it out when the bottle is done.

What do you do when your extract is done?

I put the used bean in a continer of sugar and let it sit. Eventually, you'll have vanilla sugar to play with.

dehydrate it and blitz in a coffee grinder...vanilla powder

shorty wrote:I have a dumb question. If I omitted the vanilla extract in a cake by accident, can I increase the amount of vanilla extract in the frosting to compensate?

If you really don't like the taste of the cake, you can always split it into very thin layers; you might not be able to tell with all the extra frosting between. Or you can cut it up and make a trifle. Or use it to make ice cream cake. Once the ice cream melts a little, it will soak in.

We snip off a piece of the leftover vanilla bean and add into the coffee filter when brewing coffee. I also keep a couple of beans in my powdered sugar canister which is lovely when I make butter-cream frosting. We typically put the smaller beans into extract bottles and reserve the large beautiful beans for individual purchase at The Spice House. At one point we had trouble keeping these smaller beans in stock as Trio was using several hundred a month. They were using them as a skewer for a tempura shrimp dish!