Update on Appleheads

I started drying these appleheads 2 weeks ago and wanted to update you on how they were doing and which methods worked the best.  If you look back at my original post you will see that I tried 4 different recommended methods:  air dried, microwave dried, oven dried, and dried using the method I was taught in school which involves dipping them in lemon juice and then coating them with salt.

From left to right: air dried, oven dried, salt and lemon juice, and microwaved

This is not the best picture but here is the air dried one.  It worked quite well and is thoroughly dried at this point.

Air dried

This one also worked quite well.  It’s the oven dried one.  The thing about this is that although it seemed to get a head start from the oven drying, it still took just as long as the air dried one to completely dry.  Perhaps if I had kept it in the oven longer, it would have hastened the process.

Oven dried

This next one is the one that was done by dipping it in lemon juice and packing it in salt.  It has retained its whitish colour much better than the other appleheads but it has barely made any progress in the drying process.

Lemon juice and salt

And finally, here’s the one that was done in the microwave.  At the time, I had said that it just seemed to make it shrink and get mushy but didn’t dry it at all.  As you can see the results are less than desirable!

Microwaved