My Junk Creation: Very Versatile Baked Orange Cup

I’m in love with my accidental junk creation.

Later, I’ll tell you about the project I intended. That one worked out too, but I got a bonus — a very lovely deep orange color cup, scoop, what-have-you, multi-tasking genius of a piece of fruit.

To avoid info overload, I’m going to tell you how to make the orange cup now. Then, I’ll list out all the many lovely uses in another post. After that, I’ll show you what I did with the other half of the orange. The recipe below is not as complicated as it looks. I’m probably chatting more than I should.

Recipe for Baked Orange Cup

J •Pick out a very nice, round-as-possible navel orange. If you don’t live near a free orange tree in California, you’ll probably have to buy one. Sorry.

J •Remove any pesky stickers and give the orange a quick shower.

J •This next step is where I made the mistake that produced my orange scoop. I’m not a good cutter. Just not. I should have cut the orange into two equal parts for my intended project. When you carefully cut your orange, cut it so that one half will be slightly bigger than the other one. That means one cup is about one-fourth to one-half of an inch bigger than the other one. Use your judgment according to your orange’s size. Keep in mind that the orange will shrink during baking.

J •Here comes the messy part. If you are some weird sort of eater you might be able to do this another way, but not me. I used a melon baller to scoop out the sweet orange flesh. I suppose you could use a spoon as well. If you use the melon baller option like I did, be warned that it’s rather messy. Remove as much orange flesh as possible.

J •This project is green in that you’ll have a nifty orange cup with lots of uses, but the oven part isn’t so green. If the temp outside is around 90 degrees F and the humidity is around 60 percent, then you can let your orange cups dry out in the sunshine. That requires zero energy. However, I did this on a cloudy spring day, and I have no yard for my apartment. I’m also afraid the resident geese would carry my orange halves away. Seriously, they chase me and hiss at me, why wouldn’t they steal my orange halves? Anyway, be sure to eat your orange flesh. Don’t waste it.

J •If you have the weather described above, no worries. Leave your orange outside for a day when it’s not raining. If not, set your oven to 140 F or to its lowest temperature (but not lower than 140). My oven won’t go lower than 170 F, so that’s what I used. Place the flesh-naked orange cups on a baking dish in the center of the oven.

J •Bake your oranges for around 8 hours, or until they are hard. If you feel soft spots, keep baking. Please don’t leave the oven unintended. Do this on a day when you’ll be home, and leave yourself a note that the oven is indeed on. During baking, you may turn off the oven if you need to go out. I did this and the residual heat in the oven kept things going a bit. It’s perfectly fine to turn the oven off from time to time during the baking.

J •Check and flip your orange cups. If you bake them on the cut side, a nice little rim will form, but you should also flip them every two hours or so to keep things even. The oranges weren’t too hot to handle with bare hands with the oven at 170, but be careful.

J •If you take your cups out and then later decide, oops, they are still a bit soft, no worries, just put them back in the oven. This isn’t a cake or pasta. Oranges are agreeable and they smell so good while baking. The bottoms of the oranges (not the cut sides) seem to be the last area to dry. If you don’t like the scent of orange, you won’t have to smell it after the baking is over. There’s really no smell left.

J •There you go! Baked orange cups. Reserve your larger cup for another project. Smooth any rough areas of dried flesh inside the smaller cup with your hands. If you want things really smooth, I’m guessing you could try sandpaper. I like the orange cup natural, since it’s just more rustic and versatile that way. If you really must, I bet you could paint the inside of it.

Check back tomorrow for the many uses (mostly photographed!) of a baked orange cup. It’s exciting, I promise.