Vanilla Extract, Imitation Vanilla, And Vanilla Flavoring???
Decorating By Mikel79 Updated 4 Dec 2010 , 2:34am by LaurenLuLu
Imitation vanilla is synthetic and pure vanilla comes from vanilla beans. Pure vanilla is stronger than imitation, so it takes less of it. If the flavor of what I'm making is supposed to be vanilla (vanilla cake, vanilla frosting, etc), I use pure vanilla because it's better. If it's just a highlight (like the dash you add to chocolate or other flavors) then I will use imitation because it's cheaper. Pure vanilla is brown, and will tint your white buttercream so I try to use a clear imitation for that.
I'm sure there are other differences/reason to choose one or the other, but those are mine. 
HTH
http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/tools-and-techniques/vanilla-extract-questions.htm
Imitation vanilla is synthetic and pure vanilla comes from vanilla beans. Pure vanilla is stronger than imitation, so it takes less of it. If the flavor of what I'm making is supposed to be vanilla (vanilla cake, vanilla frosting, etc), I use pure vanilla because it's better. If it's just a highlight (like the dash you add to chocolate or other flavors) then I will use imitation because it's cheaper. Pure vanilla is brown, and will tint your white buttercream so I try to use a clear imitation for that.
I'm sure there are other differences/reason to choose one or the other, but those are mine.
HTHhttp://recipes.howstuffworks.com/tools-and-techniques/vanilla-extract-questions.htm
Thank you for the information! That link was helpful as well!
Michael
There was a test on Cook's Illustrated or somewhere like that --maybe not CI but someone will think of the right place--anyhow they tested cookies made with real vanilla and with imitation. And they could not tell the difference.
In icings for sure and maybe in cake we can detect the difference but not in cookies so says that experiment. Interesting huh.
There's also vanilla paste which is basically vanilla beans scraped into a thick viscous medium similar to corn syrup. Tastes AMAZING although the drawback is that in a frosting the tiny seeds can be seen.
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