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I could not find vanilla extract in my town. There is vanilla sugar instead in markets.In my cake recipe, there is vanilla extract and it is whipped with egg, sugar and oil. But I am not sure with vanilla sugar.
On my first attempt I mixed it with dry ingredients, but the cake I made had too much crystallization. I wasn't sure if that was the reason.
Should I mix it with my dry ingredients like flour, baking powder and etc or with egg and sugar in the first step. ?
Thanks.
You should use it as the sugar the recipe calls for. In this case, whip it with the eggs and oil. The vanilla in vanilla sugar is for flavoring and does not really alter the sugar.
Assuming that you ask about the dry product that usually consists of mostly sugar plus vanillin (or if really posh, genuine vanilla), the recommendation is to treat it like sugar and add it together with the other sugar in the recipe.
The total amount is small(ish), so unless you are making something very sensitive and finicky, adding it to the flour won’t make much of a difference, but it’s better and customary to treat it as sugar. If your recipe separates the sugar and uses some in a creaming step and some with beaten egg whites, add it to the former. You don’t want anything to interfere with the whites. (Again: small risk, but better safe than sorry.)
