Real or fake vanilla? Chocolate chunk cookies put to the taste test

You may have noticed the price of vanilla extract has skyrocketed in the past year or so.

The higher price has been caused by a combination of factors, from a cyclone hitting Madagascar, the world's dominant supplier of vanilla, to a trend toward "natural" ingredients by big food companies that produce 80 per cent of the products on grocery shelves.

Vanilla now costs about 20 times what it did five or six years ago.

And growing vanilla is very labour intensive.

It takes a plantation of vanilla orchids four to five years to get up and running. Each plant flowers for one day and must be hand pollinated, then dried and cured in the sun using traditional methods.

So technology has stepped up to come up with some pretty fine substitutes.

There are two types of vanillin, the compound that gives vanilla beans their much-loved flavour: natural, derived from trees, clove oil or rice pulp; and synthetic, derived from glycol, a byproduct of the petroleum industry.

Taste the difference?

But can you tell the difference in a chocolate chip cookie?

We did an informal and completely unscientific taste test in the Calgary Eyeopener studio Tuesday morning with hosts David Gray and Angela Knight, and director Paul Karchut.

Interestingly, they all chose the cookie with the real vanilla, although they said both tasted fantastic.

There was no discernible odd taste in the cookies made with artificial extract.

My theory: the real vanilla is a bit bolder, more intense and has a stronger flavour — and our sense of smell drives much of what we taste.

Chocolate chunk cookies

Regardless of the label on your bottle of vanilla, here's my go-to chocolate chunk cookie recipe.

Chocolate chips are perfectly fine here, but I like to chop dark chocolate bars or disks of couverture chocolate.

They add a range of big chocolate puddles to little chocolate bits in each cookie.

Ingredients

¾ cup butter, at room temperature.

1 cup packed brown sugar.

¼ cup white sugar.

1 large egg.

1-2 tsp vanilla, real or artificial.

2 cups all-purpose flour.

1 tsp baking soda.

¼-½ tsp salt.

1 cup or so chopped dark chocolate or chocolate chips.

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 177 C (350 F)

In a large bowl, beat the butter, sugars, egg and vanilla for a few minutes until pale and light.

Add flour, baking soda and salt .Stir until almost combined.

Add the chocolate and stir just until blended.

Drop by the scoop or large spoonful onto parchment-lined baking sheets.

Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, or until golden around the edges but still fairly pale in the middle.

Keep in mind they'll firm up as they cool. Transfer to a wire rack, if you have one.

Serving: Makes about 1.5 dozen cookies.

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With files from the Calgary Eyeopener.