FALL POTPOURRI WITH CITRUS, HERB AND SPICE

Autumn is definitely a vibe, and it’s always associated with colors, warm clothing and smells.

When it comes to the season of Fall, I always have to have my house smelling like a pumpkin farm that is baking pies and making cider. But how hard is it to make your own bottled Fall scent? It’s not really. You just need to dehydrate some fruit!

Ingredients/Instructions

You won’t even need a dehydrator. All you really need is an oven. You can also let the fruit sit out on a tray in the sun for a week, but I honestly don’t have the patience or the time for that.

I just use my oven, set at 175°F, and bake the sliced or seeded fruit for 7 hours. I’m sure you could use a dehydrator, and it would be quicker, but I just utilize the appliances I have.

What you put in your potpourri is really up to you. I like to store them in lidded mason jars as well, so that if you want to gift the jars, they can stay bottled up and fresh.

For my potpourri jar, I used blood oranges, oranges, lemon, pears, apples, pomegranate seeds, sage leaves, cinnamon sticks, crystalized ginger, anise stars and tri-colored peppercorns.

You do not have to dehydrate the cinnamon sticks, ginger and pepper. Those already have the smell you want. The main takeaway is to use a lot of cinnamon sticks. When making your own potpourri, it won’t be as potent as buying the factory made bags. In my batch for one jar, I used 1 of each fruit but 3 of the blood oranges, because those have the most fragrance when dried out. I also used a handful of cinnamon sticks, peppercorns, pomegranate seeds and about 5 star anise seeds.

After the 7 hours of baking, I did let it sit out for about an hour to dry out any sticky parts. Then place how you want in the jar. Make sure you have quite a few of the blood orange slices along the jar wall, so that they show! It’s easier to arrange most of the cinnamon sticks first. Those get harder to arrange once the jar gets full.