The Absolute Best Way To Incorporate Vanilla Bean Paste Into Baked Goods

While most bakers have a bottle of vanilla extract in their pantry, vanilla bean paste is a less common product with its own flavor, texture, and visual benefits. Made by mixing vanilla extract, vanilla beans, and a thickener, vanilla bean paste has the consistency and slight transparency of honey and a deep brown hue like molasses dotted with tiny black specks of vanilla beans.

Vanilla bean paste has a much more potent vanilla aroma and a thicker consistency than vanilla extract, which is made by soaking vanilla pods in alcohol and water. Plus, corn syrup or inverted sugar are the most common thickeners, giving vanilla bean paste a subtle sweetness to boot. Its sweeter profile, stronger aroma, and flecks of real vanilla beans make vanilla bean paste a more complex addition to baked goods.

The best way to incorporate vanilla bean paste into baked goods is to stir it into a rich buttercream. Vanilla buttercream will benefit from the double strength of extract and real vanilla beans as well as the elegant visual appeal of the vanilla bean flecks dotting the off-white cream. You can follow this recipe for vanilla buttercream and use vanilla bean paste in an equal swap for vanilla extract.

Of course, you can use vanilla bean paste as a vanilla extract substitute in cake batters or cookie dough too. The result will be a much stronger and more natural vanilla taste. However, this application will mask the stunning visual of the vanilla bean specks.

Vanilla bean paste is a great way to give buttercream a more intense aroma and the look of real vanilla beans. But if you want the appearance of vanilla beans, why not use just the beans themselves? After all, you can buy whole vanilla bean pods.

Vanilla bean pods are the ultimate all-natural, completely unprocessed ingredient that both extract and paste attempt to mimic. They certainly have the strongest, most pure flavor of the three. However, vanilla bean pods are very expensive and require you to process them before incorporating them into your recipe.

Vanilla bean paste takes out the grunt work of scraping the beans from the pod or steeping the pods themselves before using them in a recipe. Some might call vanilla bean paste the middle ground between extract and whole pods. In addition to buttercream, you can also use vanilla bean paste instead of extract or pods in homemade vanilla ice cream. We use it in our recipe for brown butter pecan ice cream to stand up to the ultra rich notes of butter and pecan. You can also use vanilla bean paste in this recipe for honey whipped cream to dollop atop the butter pecan ice cream, so you get vanilla two ways.