Making Potpourri - my new hobby

I’ve been making potpourri for almost a year now. I really like doing it and it has become a creative process for me. I’ve never considered myself a very creative person, but with the potpourri and my candles, I think I’m learning to be. Making potpourri with fruit is very easy. You can use about any fruit and cut it however you like. You need to experiment to find the ones you like the best. I’m using apples and oranges right now. You just cut in slices and place in your oven, set it on the lowest setting and let the fruit dry. It takes checking about every 3 hours and turning the fruit over. Depending on the sizes you’ve sliced will determine the actual time it takes for them to dry. It takes about 12 hours for them to dry and that is with 1/4 inch slices. I tried some quartering some yesterday to give a little variety and they turned out quite well. The apples need to be soaked in lemon juice to keep them from turning brown. Well, I had this great idea to add some food coloring to make my apples and oranges have more color. With the apples I soaked them in the lemon juice, then put them in a paper cup with water and red food coloring. And, it worked! I had beautiful dried red apple pieces and slices. Then I thought, why couldn’t I add the food coloring to the lemon juice and it worked even better. For the oranges I soaked them in yellow coloring and water, and some I did in red and yellow mixed to get more of an orange color. The oranges in the orange food coloring came out brighter, but I was pleased with the ones in the yellow too. It gave more variety in my mixture of potpourri. Make sure to have your family save their orange peels as you’ll want to dry them the same way and have even more variety.

For grapes, if you boil them first so the pop the skin, then you put them in the oven and let them dry the same way.

I dry mine on cookie sheets covered with alunimun foil. This way I put 4 cookie sheets with the friut in the oven at one time. Keep checking as some will start drying sooner then the others and you’ll find as you turn them over you’ll want to move some to the top shelf and some to the bottom. Be sure you have your oven set on the lowest setting, on mine it is warm. If you have it higher you will burn the fruit.

After you’ve finished drying your fruit, add some fragrance oil. I used a fruit scent that I ordered “From Nature with Love”. Use a dropper and put more scent on the orange peels, they hold the scent longer. Then put a little on some of the other dried fruits, you don’t need to put it on each piece. And, a little of the scent goes a long way. You can store your potpourri in plastic bags if you aren’t ready to display them yet.