Ladyguide: Dried Orange Slices – Persephone Magazine

It’s beginning to look a lot like autumn! I swear I wasn’t going to say the “C” word. I promise. Now that autumn is here and there are less than three months until The Festivity That Shall Not Be Named, I am already wanting to bring some loveliness into our home. Mr. Juniper could be heard exclaiming, “But it’s not even Halloween yet!” Dried orange slices? They would be acceptable, wouldn’t they? Very autumnal? Not exclusively linked with The Festivity That Shall Not Be Named? “No autumn wreaths, though!” he said. We shall see, Mr. Juniper. We shall see.

Every year, I make dried orange slices. Admittedly, I do wait until December, late November at the absolute earliest. This year has been a little trying at times and the Country Living posts on my Facebook feed were getting to me. I wanted some more loveliness in the house. Something relatively simple. Something that really wasn’t too suggestive of The Festivity That Shall Not Be Named. So I made dried orange slices and proceeded to use them in every manner possible.

This is how I did it.

I used: oranges, foil, a pizza pan, an oven.

Everything at hand, I preheated the oven to 100ºC (approx. 210ºF). I then sliced the oranges into 1cm thick slices. I gently squished the slices between tea towels to get as much juice out without wrecking the slices. I then put the slices on a foil-lined pizza pan. I use foil because, well, it reduces the clean up afterwards, and if there’s a disaster, it all just goes in the bin. Hurrah for lazy crafting! I then put the pizza pan and orange slices into the oven. The slices cooked for about five hours, and I turned them occasionally (especially near the beginning). Once they were done, it was time to let them cool.

Orange slices — All sliced up and ready to go!

Orange slices, foil, oven — Ready for the oven!

Dried orange slices — Out of the oven at last!

Once cooled, I used the orange slices to make the following: a little garland, to wrap up a gift, and to make cookies look even prettier. I used bakers twine for the gift, curling ribbon and jute twine for the cookies, and jute twine for the garland.