The problem is, there aren't enough vanilla-producing orchids. "We don't have the supply to meet the demand right now," says Nielsen.

Nielsen-Massey isn't taking orders from any new customers at the moment, because the supply of vanilla beans is so limited. Food companies — and small-town bakers like Gerry Newman — all are trying to secure a piece of that limited supply, bidding up the price. A bag of vanilla beans in Madagascar now costs more than 10 times what it did five years ago.

Bad news for bakers, though, is great news for vanilla-growing farmers in the coastal regions of Madagascar. "There's really, really, a lot of cash around in these coastal towns now," says Jürg Brand.

So much cash is going to pay farmers, in fact, that an odd thing happened during the last vanilla harvest season.

"The national central bank ran out of cash," says Brand — at least the large bills that vanilla traders use to pay farmers. Farmers don't trust banks, so they were hoarding that cash at home. "All the money was somewhere on this coastal strip, under mattresses or locked in houses or I don't know where," he says.

Brand, who's been living in Madagascar for the past 25 years, expects the craze to end eventually. Farmers in Madagascar now are rebuilding vanilla plantations as quickly as they can, but it takes four or five years before those orchids start producing seeds.

This past March, there was a big setback: A cyclone hit Madagascar, destroying perhaps a third of the crop, pushing prices up even more.

Vanilla pods are so precious, theft has become a major problem. Farmers are so worried about their crops being stolen directly from their fields that they are harvesting the beans much too early. For vanilla lovers, it's doubly bad news. Not only are vanilla beans scarce and expensive, the quality is generally quite poor, too.