By Jessica Domel

Break out the mixing bowl and preheat the oven… It’s time to celebrate! The maker of one of my favorite baking ingredients is celebrating a milestone this month—its 125th anniversary.

Adams Extract and Spice, the company that now makes Adams Best Vanilla Extract, was first started in 1888 in Michigan.

Why am I mentioning this? In 1905, John Anderson Adams, a pharmacist at the time, moved his family to Beeville, Texas. While in Beeville, Adams wanted to help his wife find a solution that wouldn’t bake or freeze out of foods the way traditional vanilla flavoring did at that time.

Using $6.71 in materials, Adams came up with the concoction now known as Adams Best Vanilla Extract.

I cannot tell you how many bottles of Adams Best I go through a year. I absolutely love vanilla, and I was excited to learn that Adams Extract and Spice is a Texas-based company.

According to the San Antonio Express-News, the company was based in Austin for many years before it moved to Gonzales in 2002.

There, in an 80,000 square-foot facility on 10 acres, Texans create extracts, spices and many other types of food flavorings that we use as we cook and bake every day.

So today, I tip my baker’s hat to a pharmacist whose wife wanted better vanilla and to the many Texans who help make my food better every day. Join me, won’t you?