How to Make Dehydrated Fruits

Hello dreamers! Recently we posted a few instagram stories of how we were dehydrating our fruits here at Zee & Elle, and you guys LOVED it! Hence, today we shall share with you more on our tips and tricks in making dehydrated fruits.

First of all, what can we actually do with dehydrated fruits? Well, there are a variety of uses for dehydrated fruits especially citrus fruits like lemons or oranges. In our humble little cake shop in Singapore, we use it for cake decorations such as our Honey Yuzu Fresh Cream Cake as well as upon customization requests.

The addition of these delicate-looking dehydrated fruits gives customized cakes much more dimensions as well as a fresh rustic look. Not only would they be looking beautiful, but they also add a boost in flavour to your cakes. Here’s one we designed for our client, incorporating some dried lemons into a garden themed cake:

Apart from celebratory cakes, adding dehydrated strawberry slices to tarts also brings it a sophisticated look. Other than decoration uses, these dehydrated fruit slices can also be used to infuse your water.

Now, how do we make dehydrated fruits? In our studio, we have a dehydrator to do the trick. Just pure sliced lemons placed into the racks for drying! Since the dehydrator maintains the natural sweetness the lemon already has, we usually don’t add any preservatives or additional sugars to them. 

However, we do know many of you guys might not have a dehydrator at home. Fret not because this can be done in your oven too! 

Ingredients needed: 

Lemon and fine sugar

Steps:

1. Preheat your oven to 90°C 
2. Line your baking tray with a baking sheet 
3. Slice lemons into thin equal slices. Thinner slices would be dried faster.  For strawberries, you might want to use a kitchen slicer to make thin slices. 
4. Place lemon slices onto the baking sheet, spread out evenly. 
5. Sprinkle fine sugar evenly over lemon slices
6. Let it dry in the oven for 2 ½ hours, keeping a close watch during the last hour to ensure it doesn't burn. For even drying, you might want to rotate your baking tray every hour or so. Some fruits might take longer, for example: oranges would take 4hours. When it's dry to touch, that's when you know it's ready. 

Storage:

To keep these dehydrated fruits fresh, it's important to keep them in airtight containers. Only store them after they have completely cooled, as any condensation may cause these beautiful treats to get mouldy. Alternatively, freeze them in airtight containers or freezer bags! 

Dehydrated lemons slices

We hope this has taught you a little something about dehydrating fruits. Do tag us @zeeandellesg if you have tried making these delicious treats on your own. If you would like us to cover more on different tricks, leave us a comment on our facebook post here.