The aroma of vanilla is beautiful on its own, and it blends so wonderfully with other natural botanicals including citrus, mint and spice essential oils. When used sparingly, it helps to balance out blends.
Steam distillation of vanilla beans does not result in a useful oil. CO2 and solvent extraction is usually necessary to obtain the precious aromatic and flavorful components. Vanilla Bean CO2 and Vanilla Bean Absolutes are generally costly. An alternative is to create an alcohol based extract that can be used for your water based formulations like room mists and body sprays. If you've ever used "genuine vanilla extract" in your culinary recipes, you are already familiar with the aroma and flavor of the concentrated extract.
The process for creating homemade vanilla extract is similar to the process that I introduced in last week's Herbal Tincture blog post and in the new Herbal Tincture Recipe for Aromatherapy/Skin Care that I added to AromaWeb.
Click here to read the rest of this article and to view the Vanilla Extract Recipe on AromaWeb....
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