Vanilla Oil DIY

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Vanilla is a delicious, comforting, and sensual scent that is much loved. Like so many other good things, vanilla also happens to be a little bit high maintenance. For starters, it is second only to saffron in expense, largely due to how vanilla has to be handled and processed, plus it also cannot be made into an essential oil in the same manner as other plants (through distillation). You can find absolutes and CO2 extracts, but usually these are already premixed with a carrier oil and quite expensive. No worries though, because just as with vanilla extract, it’s simple to make your own vanilla infused oil to use in any bath/body product you want such as the base of a perfumed body oil, in body butter, lip balm, bath oil, or body scrub, etc. I’ll most likely be making all of those in fact, and more, because vanilla is just so all-around lovely and mood lifting.

Ingredients:

2 or 3 whole vanilla beans

2 cups carrier oil such as jojoba, sweet almond, or grapeseed oil

Prepackaged

Bulk Bin

Set up a double boiler arrangement with the water simmering. (I use a pyrex measuring cup in a pot of water.) Cut the vanilla beans down the middle and scoop out the insides into the top of your double boiler, then chop up the beans and add them as well. Pour the carrier oil over the beans, stir occasionally, and add more water to the bottom of the double boiler as needed. It will take an hour or two, so do this when you know you’ll be home for a while. Strain the oil once it has cooled, or just leave the vanilla bits in the oil to impart more scent over time. (It’s impossible to get all those little seeds out so don’t worry about that.) I put half of a vanilla bean into each of my containers to keep the infusion process going. You can add vitamin E for preservative properties if you aren’t going to use the oil within a month or two. Different carrier oils have different shelf-lives, but jojoba has the longest of the three I mentioned. The other two, almond and grapeseed, have about a year or so of shelf-life. I don’t think any vanilla infused oil is at risk of not getting used within a year though, it smells too good!

Thanks for reading and please share with the vanilla lovers in your life. Happy health and sweet scents to you!