Vanilla Spice Drinks - A plant native to Mexico now common in areas throughout the West Indies and Indian Ocean. The pod is used to make extracts which we use in cooking. The whole pod may also be purchased and used as a fragrance or split and scraped to allow the tiny seeds to flavor the dish. The split pods are often placed in granulated sugar to make vanilla sugar. Also comes in a liquid extract form, which is made by processing vanilla beans in an alcohol-water solution.