There is a surprisingly wide range of vanilla extracts, vanilla powders, vanilla beans, and vanilla pastes available on the market. You may have wondered whether you are better off using vanilla bean powder to substitute vanilla beans. We have tested them so that you don’t have to.
Vanilla Bean Powder
Vanilla bean powder is made from whole vanilla beans which have been ground up. This makes it cheaper than buying whole vanilla beans. Vanilla bean powder is also much easier to use than whole vanilla beans.
If you need to substitute one for the other in a recipe, use half a teaspoon of vanilla powder to replace two inches of vanilla bean. Whatever you are baking will come out with the same beautiful specks you would get from vanilla beans.
Vanilla bean powder is not the same as vanilla powder. The vanilla powder works best when you do not want the vanilla to affect the color of the food. You might want your vanilla cake to come out white, sans specks. We learned this information after looking up everything.
We also learned that vanilla bean powder is like vanilla beans because its quality worsens the longer it is stored. This deterioration in quality affects both vanilla beans and vanilla bean powder. We learned that vanilla bean paste is a better substitute for whole vanilla beans than vanilla bean powder.
We ended up investing in vanilla bean powder we found on Amazon. It cost $10 an ounce which is expensive but not as expensive as vanilla beans. Two vanilla beans cost nearly $20. It can take up to 8 vanilla beans to make an ounce of vanilla beans.
The vanilla bean powder we ordered from Amazon smelled lovely. We went ahead and used one and a half teaspoons of vanilla bean paste to make blackberry bread. The recipe called for vanilla extract but I used the vanilla powder as a substitute. The results were not what I expected.
The vanilla flavor was present but subdued. We were hoping to be wowed by the vanilla flavor. We were also hoping to see vanilla bean specks on the bread. There weren’t any specks. The bread took on a grey tint instead. Vanilla bean powder does not achieve beautiful specks or a strong vanilla flavor. Vanilla bean paste does that for me.
But I might use vanilla powder if I was in a bind with no way to get some vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste. Besides baking, the vanilla powder might be nice for smoothies, oatmeal, or even coffee.
