Twenty-five days of Christmas: Day #6 (late edition)

Dehydrated Citrus Fruit

I really love the look of a beautifully decorated Christmas tree. Through the years I’ve created a few doozies to varying degrees of success. The best tree I ever created, though, was made with only three elements: white lights (a must for me, unless you’re doing a retro 50s-style tree, in that case coloured lights look great), silver ball ornaments and dried citrus fruit. Yes, citrus fruit.

I don’t know how I came up with this idea, but I think it looked amazing. (I know I didn’t reinvent the wheel with this one — I’m sure it’s been done a million times before). You can use any combination of fruit, but I think the trick is to find relatively thick-fleshed varieties. Limes, lemons, oranges and grapefruit word very well. The white lights illuminate the transparent flesh of the fruit and gently heat them up, giving off a wonderful pine and citrus smell.

To make the ornaments, simply cut the fruit into 1/4 inch thick slices and lay them flat on a parchment paper-lined cookie trays. Bake them at your oven’s lowest temperature leaving the oven door slightly ajar. This will take several hours. Flip the slices periodically to ensure even dehydration. Be careful not to brown the slices — when they are rubbery and dryish, they are done. Remove them from the oven and let cool completely. While they are still warm, though, pierce the fruit with metal hooks (I used the green ones) and, if you want, sprinkle them with a little dusting of glitter. I think it’s pretty to use the corresponding colour of the fruit — green glitter for limes, pink for grapefruit, orange for oranges and yellow for lemons. Don’t use too much though, or else you’ll ruin the beautiful illuminating effect the ornaments have when hung among the white lights.

Don’t be stingy with this decoration. More is definitely more (I secretly hate under-decorated trees). I like to see lots of white lights, lots of silver balls and lots of citrus fruit! The nice thing about these ornaments is if you store them properly, they last for years and years. Cost-saving tip: buy the silver balls at a dollar store. Unless you’re Rockafella’ there is no reason to be buying Swarovski balls — people who insist on buying precious ornaments always have ugly trees because they’re so sparse. Stock up on the cheapest-of-the-cheap variety at a dollar store and load up the tree. Trust me, it will look very chic if you use don’t mix’n’match styles and stick to one colour, gold or silver. I apologize if that sounded like tough love Dr. Phil-style. I just needed to get it off my chest. Happy decorating! Send me pictures of your trees, everyone, and I'll get out my camera and take some shots of the citrus ornaments I dried several years ago.