Certain things are unique to professional kitchens, confined to the cold lighting of stainless-steel galleys, rarely seeing the light of day: tepid coffee drunk from plastic quart containers. Blue-striped towels frayed at the edges like ancient papyrus. But perhaps my favorite industry secret, and one I call upon to level up my baked goods, is vanilla powder. Not beans, not extract, and not paste. Powder.
Recently I tried a new-to-me brand of vanilla powder from Beyond Good, the first version I’ve seen specifically for home bakers. I swapped out my extract for a dash of the precious powder in my go-to vanilla cake recipe to give it a spin. Specks of vanilla peppered the cake, lending it an alluring aroma akin to fresh beans. One taste and I was hooked, reminded why professional bakers have been gatekeeping this wonder ingredient as their own.
What is vanilla powder?
Vanilla powder (also called vanilla bean powder) is the entire bean—pod, beans (a.k.a. caviar), and all—dried and blitzed up into a powder. This not only makes the product a sustainable option (no waste!), but it also makes it an inexpensive alternative to pricier forms of vanilla. It tastes, looks, and smells like vanilla bean, because it is. Just far more accessible and user-friendly. (No slicing beans open, no scraping, and no worrying about the beans getting old and drying out.)
And unlike extracts and pastes, which use alcohol to coax out the bean’s flavors, powder is simply the ground vanilla—making it an ideal option for sensitive baked goods like meringues or macarons, where even the slightest addition of liquid can compromise the structure. Whereas extracts seemingly disappear when cooked at a high temperature, powder can’t evaporate, making it a prime candidate for applications that require boiling, such as a caramel.
How do you use vanilla powder?
Vanilla powder tends to be more concentrated than other forms of vanilla, so for every teaspoon of vanilla extract or paste a recipe calls for, I swap it out for half the amount of powder. The easiest way to use it is to add it to your dry ingredients, but I’ve found that adding it to a warm fat or liquid helps bloom the powder and reveal its full flavor potential. If your recipe has melted butter, adding it to the warm butter works wonders. Or if your cake calls for hot coffee, mixing it into the java unleashes a bouquet of vanilla aroma. I’ve even played around with adding it to dried spice blends, pairing it with smoked paprika and garlic powder to create a bewitching rub that wakes up chicken thighs.
A one-ounce jar of Beyond Good’s vanilla powder costs about twenty bucks. I’ve had my jar for a few months, stashed in my pantry alongside my spices, and have barely made a dent in it. I still use vanilla extract and paste—especially in cold applications like whipped cream or macerated berries where I want a quick hit of unbloomed vanilla flavor—but have made a permanent spot for powder to live alongside the two, called into action when the time is right.