How to Dry Fruit for Dried Orange Garland & More

Don’t you just love the smell of fruits and herbs during the holidays. I love to dry fruit and use it to create yummy smelling Garlands and Wreaths.

If you’d like to know how to dry fruit for dried orange garland, here is how I’ve done it for years and it’s super easy!

Today I’m sharing how to dry oranges but this method works for Apples, Lemons, Limes, grapefruit, etc.

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Materials to Dry Fruit

You don’t need a lot to dry fruit in an oven. Naturally, if you have a dehydrator, the process is simple, however the oven works great and your house smells wonderful.

Just determine what projects your want to use the dried fruit for this holiday and dry enough to accommodate these projects.

Medium size oranges, a baking sheet, parchment paper and a mandolin for even slicing.

Set the mandolin at the #3 setting because you don’t want the orange slices to be overly thin.

Note: You can slice oranges with a knife, however try to slice as evenly as possible so that they all dry at approximately the same rate.

Cover your baking sheet with parchment paper and spread the orange slices evenly over the sheet.

Bake Orange Slices Until Dry

Next, set your oven to bake at 200 degrees and place the oranges slices in the over for approx. 2 hours. Enjoy the fresh smell throughout the house!

After 2 hours, your oranges will be slightly smaller as you can see here.

Prepare and Bake Again

At this point your parchment paper may be damp or wet. If so, transfer your orange slices to a fresh sheet of parchment paper and flip the slices over to the other side.

Return to the oven and bake for another hour.

Fruit Dried for Holiday Projects

Finally, after 3 hours of baking, here is what your orange slices should look like.

Possible Projects Using Dried Oranges

Here are some creative ways to use your orange slices. Tomorrow, I will be sharing the garland I made with these slices. I can’t wait for you to see.

Last year, I used hot glue to hold the slices together and added a fresh cranberry to the center.

You might also enjoy how to make tassels from jute and this cute ticking tassel garland. Both of these projects work well when making a dried fruit project.

You can see how I used them on the rosemary wreath at my kitchen window. In addition, the dried fruit garland includes both oranges and apples which were dried with this same technique.

Topiaries with Dried Oranges

Here are two different DIY Topiary Tutorials to use dried fruit.

Foraged Christmas Topiaries Tutorial

Real Cedar and Orange Topiaries

Strings of popcorn is an age old tradition at Christmas and Yasminvink added dried orange slices to up the wow factor.

Simple rosemary, cloves and pinecones combine for this simple but lovely garland by Elien at Home Grown Happiness

Here is another simple dried orange slice garland by Jennifer Rizzo

I saw where Meeghan at Caligirlinasouthernworld is drying orange slices this holiday season as well. Here she has combined a lambs ear garland with dried orange slices. In addition, she adds a couple of slices to the faux cake top.

Here is another project from the holidays last year. For this project, I used a grapevine wreath, rosemary and dried orange slices for a chair charm.

Do you have several out-of-date Christmas Décor items? See how to repurpose them to use this year.

Thanks for stopping by. I look forward to sharing my next adventure with you.

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