“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”—Sir Richard Steele

Adding vanilla can be a simple or complex as you desire it. If you chocolate recipe contains extra cocoa butter, try splitting a vanilla bean and “extracting” it in the melted cocoa butter for an hour or so. Then scrape the seeds into the butter, toss the bean and add the extract to your refining chocolate. The seeds will refine and you will have a nice addition of vanilla. The proportion is up to you, but I like one vanilla bean to about 5 lbs of chocolate.