How to Get Even More Vanilla Flavor in Your Ice Cream...

If you’ve been using vanilla extract in your Ninja Creami recipes and want to take the vanilla flavor up a notch, vanilla bean paste is the upgrade. Same effort, noticeably better results.

What is vanilla bean paste?

Vanilla bean paste is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a thick paste made from real vanilla beans. It contains the actual seeds scraped from inside vanilla bean pods, which is where the most intense vanilla flavor lives. When you use it in ice cream, you get those tiny black vanilla bean specks throughout the pint, along with a deeper, richer vanilla flavor than extract alone delivers.

Vanilla Bean Paste vs. Vanilla Extract

Vanilla extract is made by soaking vanilla beans in alcohol, which draws out the flavor compounds. It works well and is a staple in most kitchens. But the steeping process pulls out flavor without including the actual vanilla bean seeds, so you get a good vanilla flavor but not the full depth you’d get from the bean itself.

Vanilla bean paste includes the seeds. Those seeds hold a concentrated amount of vanilla flavor that doesn’t fully transfer into extract during the steeping process. The result in ice cream is a noticeably more intense vanilla flavor, and the visual appeal of those little black specks throughout the ice cream lets you know there’s real vanilla bean in the ice cream.

You can use vanilla bean paste anywhere a recipe calls for vanilla extract. It’s a one-for-one swap in most cases. Start with the same amount the recipe calls for and adjust based on how much vanilla flavor you want.