6:30 AM

Making a Dried Orange Slice Garland

Several years ago now I dried orange slices to use on a wreath I was making. I made the wreath after Christmas because I am always running out of time to do all the things I want to do before Christmas. This is a trait, by the way, that still exists in me today. I am always running behind. However, I did manage to make a dried orange slice garland last week for a Christmas vignette area of my house. I had a blast doing it and the house smelled Heavenly!

Since it had been a number of years since I last dried oranges, I rechecked my old post to see how I had done it before. You can see that post here if you would like. I had read another blog where they had used a lower temperature oven for a longer amount of time to dry their oranges. I decided to try it their way this time around.

I put the orange slices into the oven at 200 degrees. It is best to line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. It soaks up the moisture and makes cleaning a breeze! The directions had said the drying process would take around 4 hours. My experience was that it took 5 hours. However, I kind of forgot about them, after originally checking the slices every 30 minutes, and ended up burning a few 😞.

You should turn the orange slices over every 30 minutes to avoid the curling and burning of the slices.

The truth is, if I were to do it over again, I may decide to go back to my original method of a higher oven temp. abs a shorter cooking time. I’m not sure I have the patience for the longer time and, asi mentioned, I got distracted and forgot to keep checking the slices.

I might actually look into buying a dehydrator if I were to get into doing it more often. That sounds like a good idea to me!

When the slices were done, I let them sit for a whole day. Some of them still had some juice left and I had read that another method for drying orange slices is to just let them dry naturally. So, I thought, "Why rush it?" I could make the garland the next day.

I was going to use a wooden skewer to make the holes in the oranges, but it was impossible to push the twine through the holes without causing damage to the slices.

Instead, I found an upholstery needle and that worked perfectly. I poked the needle up from the back and pulled the twine through and plunged the needle into the slice and into the back about an inch or so from the original hole point. I used around 21-22 slices to make my garland. That many slices made the perfect length for my purposes.

Here is how the garland turned out. What do you think?

I wanted to make a vignette area out of the hallway shelf that my husband made for me last year. He made it after Christmas so, this is a new decorating spot for the me this Christmas :).

I was able to display one of my favorite Christmas decorations on the shelf, as well. My daughter made this print for me while she was in college. She was an education/art major, and I loved the items she produced over the years.