Drying your own fruit is not hard to do. It’s absolutely gorgeous and perfect for ornaments, garlands, wreaths, trees and endless other crafts.

When choosing your citrus keep color in mind. I use ruby red grapefruit, oranges, blood oranges, lemons and limes. I don’t cut the core out of the apples before cutting because they are for decorating not eating and I don’t want holes in the middle

Apples are easiest to slice using a mandolin. Cut the apples about 1/8 inch thick

I cut all the citrus by hand. It doesn’t do well with a mandolin

The whole pomegranates and oranges take much longer to dry than the sliced fruit

For the oven
Set you oven to 175 degrees
1. place the citrus slices on parchment lined baking sheets
2. Try to place citrus close to the same size on each baking sheet
3. Lemons and limes are going to dry faster than oranges and grapefruit
4. Start checking your fruit at about 2 hours
5. Check every 15 to 30 minutes afterwards and remove the pieces when they dry
6. Apples fry the fastest. The lemons and limes next and then the oranges and grapefruit slices
7. The whole fruit takes at least 12 hours. Once the pomegranate is soft enough, I scrape all of the seeds out from the bottom so it can dry.
If it looks like the skin is starting to burn I remove it and let it dry the rest of the way in the counter, or place it into the dehydrator at 125 degrees for 2 to 3 hours at a time until it’s dried
8. It’s best if you can cook the whole fruit on open racks

Dehydrator
1. Set temperature to 135 degrees
2. Set timer to 4 hours
3. Check your fruit every hour or so after 3 hours as the apples and smaller citrus fruits will dry faster than large citrus


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