Ground Vanilla Bean Powder

Whole pods milled fine: seeds, pod and all. No sugar, no carrier, nothing to dissolve. Where extract wants liquid, powder goes in dry: sugar doughs, shortbread, crumbles, hot chocolate.

Powder is for the bakes where liquid is unwelcome. Extract carries its flavor in alcohol, and in a dry dough that alcohol has nowhere to go; powder just folds in. Shortbread, sablés, streusel, macaron shells: the bakes that would seize at a teaspoon of liquid take powder without noticing.

Start with about half the amount of extract your recipe calls for, taste, and adjust: a half teaspoon of powder stands in for a teaspoon of extract, a rounded teaspoon for a whole bean. The flecks stay visible in a pale crumb. Let them show.

Off the bench it blooms in anything warm: whisked into hot chocolate, stirred through an ice-cream base, dusted over the morning coffee. Baking at volume? The powder ships in bulk too.