Clove Oranges

I cant remember where I first saw one of these? I was still living at home in Dublin with my parents and think I may have been in my early teens? I remember thinking "I could try that" so off I went to Dunnes Stores with Mum, bought the oranges and cloves and started a Sheeran family tradition of making one of these each Christmas. It is a messy job and the orange juice runs out of the holes that you stab to push the cloves into but it smells GREAT!

When the orange is finished you leave it somewhere in the house and the smell continues to fill the room over the holidays.

Mum rang me last week and said she had spent all afternoon cursing me. I had no idea what she was on about until she told me she had been making her clove orange and it had been a real messy job! It had me thinking nostalgically of Christmas in Dublin and I decided I would try to do it with the kids. Three big, juicy oranges, three bags of cloves and three "stabbing" kebab sticks later and we were ready! The kids sat around the kitchen table for an hour and stabbed and poked the cloves in place. I thought they would lose patience after a while but they kept on until there wasn't a clove left.

The kitchen floor is covered in clove dust and sticky orange juice but it smells great!!!