How to Dry Oranges for a Festive Garland

Have you been seeing beautifully dried oranges and garlands everywhere this season? With just a few oranges and some time, you can create beautiful and festive orange garlands this holiday season. They are perfect for the fall and Christmas seasons. In this post, I will show you how to dry oranges for a festive garland. It’s an easy process, but you will need to be home for several hours in order to flip the oranges in the oven and check on their progress.

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Ingredients and Supplies for the Festive Garland (60″ garland)

• 4 medium-sized navel oranges (to produce 16 dried slices)
• 17 small cinnamon sticks
• Gold thread and sewing needle
• Paper towels
• Cookie sheet lined with parchment paper
• Oven
• Toothpick
• Cookie cooling rack (optional)

How to Dry Oranges for a Festive Garland

Prepare the Oranges

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees F (80 degrees C).

Slice your oranges into 1/4″ thick slices. Each orange should yield four or five perfectly sized orange slices and some smaller ends which I recommend eating instead of drying. The overall look of the garland is nicer if the orange slices are all similar in size.

Place the slices on a double layer of paper towels and press lightly with additional paper towels to remove excess moisture. This will help reduce your cooking time.

Place the orange slices on a parchment-lined cookie sheet and place in the preheated oven.

Dry the Oranges

The oranges will slowly dry in the oven. You will want to flip the oranges every 40-45 minutes. This helps to ensure even drying and oranges that will lay flat and not curl up at the edges. My oranges were very fresh and I placed them close together so they ended up taking about 7 hours to dry. If you can place your oranges a little further apart, then they will dry faster by a couple of hours. I found that the oranges on the outside edge of the cookie tray tended to dehydrate more quickly, so I rotated the oranges to help them dry more evenly. Once the oranges are mostly dry, consider checking on them every 30 minutes. This is a good project to do when you will be home for the day doing other things in or near the kitchen.

Cool the Oranges

Once the oranges no longer have any moisture left in them, take them out of the oven. You can remove any oranges that are dry and allow the rest of the oranges to continue cooking. Make sure they have no remaining moisture when you take them out or they could become moldy.

If you are making the garland, then use a toothpick to make a small hole in each orange for stringing the garland together.

Place the dried oranges on a cookie cooling rack and allow the slices to cool completely before storing or using them in the garland.

Make the Garland

This part was pretty easy and took about 20 minutes to complete.

Using a sewing needle and the gold thread, attach orange slices and cinnamon sticks alternately about two inches apart. The gold thread is threaded through the hole in each orange and the thread is wrapped three or four times around the top of each cinnamon stick and then knotted three times to secure. Make sure to leave several inches of thread on each end of the garland.

Smaller Orange-Only Garland

To make this smaller, orange-only garland, follow the recipe above, using only three oranges. Once the oranges have cooled, you will string them together two inches apart. I used twelve slices to create a 24″ garland.

Other Uses for the Dried Orange Slices

There are so many uses for these lovely gems. Freshly dehydrated oranges can be used as garnishes for festive drinks and recipes. The slices can be incorporated into a potpourri mixture or a simmering pot mix. The dried orange slices also make a lovely addition to the top of a beautifully wrapped gift. I’m sure you could think of some excellent uses for these slices.

Summary

I hope you enjoyed this post, How to Dry Oranges for a Festive Garland. You can see that it was quite an easy process and the creative possibilities for the dried orange slices are endless. If you enjoy crafting over the holidays, then you might like my post, Five Fabulous Christmas Crafts to Make Right Now. In the post, I share my most popular Christmas craft tutorials I created for this blog.