Making edible Christmas decorations

Having just moved into a new house, I have been very excited about Christmas decorations.  I have had a notion about making my own decorations and at the same time, recreate the smells of Christmas and decided on Orange, cinnamon and cloves.

Having never tried to make edible decorations, this was a bit of a challenge but I was on a mission and determined to make this work.  I started with orange clove slices.

To make these, all I did was slice some oranges and place on parchment paper on a baking tray.  I made a hole in one side of the slice with a thick needle and studded the outside rind with cloves.  I baked these in the oven at a really low heat for  2 hours but kept checking them for progress.  The smell of this process was amazing!  It filled the whole house and made me feel very Christmassy.  Sadly the holes that I had made in the rind had closed over while they were in the oven but I was able to thread a ribbon through by inserting a skewer in the flesh.  I then put them in the airing cupboard overnight.

To make the mandarins, I studded them completely with cloves and tied with ribbon in pretty bows before piling them into a bowl. I made the star for the tree by initially glueing  the cinnamon sticks into place then using transparent elastic to tie them together into a star.  As bits of the glue could still be seen, I sprayed the star silver with an edible spray (I have no intention of eating this but it was the only spray I had to hand!)  I then tied the whole thing to the top of the tree.

The pictures really don’t do these any justice as they are really pretty.  If only we had “scratch n sniff” screens, you could experience the wonderful Christmassy smells they are emitting!!