Preparation

Raw organic vanilla is organic raw vanilla seeds. They’re perfect. You don’t need extract. You get them by buying organic raw vanilla beans and cutting them open and scraping the vanilla seeds from inside. They blend in very smooth and flavorful with anything. I like to use them in making raw chocolate bars. So good! Another idea is to buy the seeds already scraped and preserved in a glass air tight jar. You can get this at www.livingtreecommunity.com. You can get raw organic Tahitian vanilla beans on www.ebay.com for cheap. another idea i used to use is to buy organic raw vanilla beans and snip them into small pieces with a scissor and grind them in a cheap coffee bean grinder for vanilla powder! It works like vanilla seeds but the vanilla bean powder i grinded i could only get so powdery myself so i switched to using the seeds. Edit: www.livingtreecommunity.com also has raw organic vanilla bean powder for a lot cheaper than the seeds since it’s using the whole flavorful bean. The outer bark tastes like vanilla just like the seeds and maybe someone will come up with a way to grind the whole vanilla pod as powdery as flour- which would be even smoother than vanilla seeds for raw chocolate bar making. But i used to use that vanilla powder i grinded myself in ice cream and as flavoring instead of vanilla extract all the time. :)

edit (march 26, 2008): wanted to try www.pureglow.com vanilla beans as they look really plump and should have a lot of seeds available.