Those little pots of vanilla essence and extract are all good and well. But the nicest (in my opinion) and easiest thing to use in baking is actually vanilla sugar. And all you need are three things….a jar, some sugar and a used vanilla pod or two.

Your just pour your sugar in the jar then whenever you use a pod take old ones out and pop new ones in. give it a shake every now and then and hey presto! Vanilla flavoured sugar. I use in cookies and biscuits, banana loaf, pancakes yummy. It has a much more authentic flavour than that nasty essence.