In France last Fall, we could not find vanilla extract for a recipe but did find vanilla powder
It is dark, like the vanilla itself and a bit more flaky than powdered.
We had a villa and were making a plum clafouti and were shopping ingredients.
What we did was to slightly warm the milk, add the vanilla powder and stirred to bloom the flavor.
There were barely discernible dark flecks, similar to using a vanilla pod and scraping the seeds, and the dessert was lovely!
I brought the rest of the powder home, but have yet to use it again, since I have a good supply of extract.