How to dry fruit for crafts

Most of the citrus fruits dry well and remain quite fragrant and keep their original color well. Oranges, tangerines, grapefruits, lemons, limes can be dried into slices or you can slice up just the peel into strips and have little curled slivers. Small citrus fruits like kumquats and key limes can be dried whole or sliced into pieces.

You have several options when collecting fruit to dry for crafts- you can visit farmers markets and offer to purchase their left over or imperfect fruits as a discount, save all your fruit skins when the kids have orange slices or when you make lemonade or even approach your whole foods store or grocery store and ask for the fruit that is not perfect for selling so they are just going to throw it away.

How to dry citrus fruit into dried slivers- After you have eaten your morning orange or grapefruit, remove any extra membrane from the skin. Slice the skin into toothpick size strips and put them onto a cookie sheet or toss them into a paper box and keep it in a warm dry place for about 3 days or until the peels are crop. If you have a dehydrator, you can also place them in the dehydrator with your other fruits and dry the slivers that way as well.

If you are using organic fruits and do not add any essential oils or any other chemicals you could save the dried peels and use them to garnish food.

How to dry citrus and other fruits with a dehydrator- Dehydrators can be an expensive "extra" kitchen tool unless you have a salvation army or goodwill near your home. You can go there and pick one up for $5 to $10 from someone else who purchased it new and probably never used it. My family always laughs when the come to visit in the fall because I usually have my 3 goodwill dehydrators cranked up drying fruits for potpourri and for cakes for the holidays. Potpourri makes wonderful holiday gifts.

Dehydrators are very easy to use. You basically plug it in and stack each shelf with your fruit or veggies, put on the lid and follow the manuf. instructions for drying time. One tip I have is to rotate the fruit trays to different levels as your fruit dries and even turn them every hour or so. This will keep your more fragile fruits from burning.

HolisticMama Guest Questions and Comments

"Do you know of a place where I can find free organic food coupons?"

Yes there is a website www.organicfoodcoupons.com that offers a huge database of all kinds of companies that have printable and online coupons for organic food.

"Hi, I just visited your site and it is absolutely wonderful!! I only wish I would have found it sooner. Last night I paid $5.00 for the salt dough recipe! Never even occured to me to look on the web for it! Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that I appreciate you giving your information for free. I was also wondering if you could tell me how to dry fruit. Do I just slice it and then sit it out for a few days or is there something else that needs to be done to it. If I put it in the oven will it dry out quicker? ( I do not have a dehydrator and really can't afford to get one. I hope you have a cheaper alternative :) Thank you."

Thanks for your kind email. Take a peek at the how to dry fruit page. I love to dry fruit to make my own potpourri as gifts and we also dry out fruit for the kids snacks.