Garlands of dried oranges are a gorgeous traditional style decoration for the home. They make use of natural products, the make the house smell amazing, and that pop of orange colour is so warm and inviting at Christmas.
Making your own dried oranges is a great activity to keep you busy one afternoon. Not only are dried oranges great for Christmas decorations but the drying process will make your home smell like a warm citrus dream.
What You Need To Make Dried Oranges
- Oranges – as many as you want but we recommend 3
- A tea towel
- Chopping board
- Oven gloves
- A metal cooling rack
- A knife
- An oven
- Ribbon, twine or string for hanging.
Preparing the oranges
Start by rounding up your oranges. Give them a little clean by running them under the tap and wipe them dry with your tea towel.
Before slicing make sure you have your chopping board and knife ready as well as having an oven rack close by to place the orange slices on when you are done cutting the fruits.
Cutting The Fruit
Once you have your clean and dry oranges it’s time to slice. Place on a chopping board. Cutting through the orange across the stem so that you have a nice cross-section of the orange segments when it’s cut.
When slicing the oranges aim to get slices half a centimetre to a centimetre thick. Remember, they will shrink a little in the oven as they dehydrate. Also, try and keep the peel intact as they will be holding the fruit together.
When you have sliced the fruit, place the slices on your tea towel and gently pat out as much juice as you can. This will help lower the drying time and lessen the risk of the fruits getting stuck on the oven rack.
Take the slices you like the size of and place them on a metal cooling rack. You don’t want to place the oranges on a baking tray because they will get stuck to it because of the sugar in the juice.
With the offcuts, you can eat the orange and consider making candied orange peels with the left-over peel.
Drying The Oranges
Now that you have your favourite slices on the rack, place the rack in the oven at 140C, 120C if you have a fan oven. You can leave them for an hour minimum. Turning them regularly until they have completely dried out. Some people like to prop the oven door open a little with a wooden spoon to allow any moisture from the oranges to evaporate.
When they look dry you can take them out of the oven, carefully with the oven gloves, and finish them off in an airing cupboard or on a tea towel on the radiator. Or anywhere dry.
Once they’re done you can thread some twine or ribbon through them to make a garland or through individual slices to make hanging ornaments.
Drying out a full orange
When drying full oranges, all you need to do is cut slits through the sides following the line of the stem and then place them in the oven for up to 15 hours at 120C. Low and slow is the aim to get rid of all that inner moisture.
Try Something Different
If you want to jazz up your orange slices you can push cloves into the dried orange slices before hanging them up.
You can use this method for apples too, which you can use to make a dried apple and orange garland.
We hope you try out this DIY for making dried oranges this Christmas. If you need more fun Christmas crafts go and check out our post, Disney Christmas Crafts.