By now most people who are going to have Christmas trees have them up. But if you are like us it is slow going this year. I made a Christmas Cactus and it is decorated! But I talked my husband into a real tree, and while we have chopped it down and set it up- it’s still not very decorated.
I wanted to use some old fashioned decorations on it. Since putting it up I have been looking at ideas for what to put on it, we have decided on dried fruit ornaments and popcorn garland. To begin I found how to dry oranges.
Oranges can be strung together to create a garland, or simply hung as ornaments as we did. Another added benefit is they smell really good!
To dry the oranges I heated the oven to 250* and sliced the oranges into as skinny of a slice as I could. These naval oranges were getting old so it did prove a little difficult to not smash them. I grabbed a couple clementine oranges as well that were still very fresh and they did not smash near as easily.
Once cut up, I arranged on a cookie sheet. I found no need to spray with any sort of nonstick spray, this didn’t create any issues.
In the oven I sort of just forgot about them for a couple hours. I went on about my day, and after probably 2.5 hours went back to check them. This was a good time to flip them and let the other side dry out more.
After about another 2 hours I checked again and my oranges were completely dry. We chose to poke a hole with a knife and add ribbon. Again, there is a variety of ways to hang the oranges, this is by far the easiest I could come up with, though.
