I’m embracing citrus season. We’ve been enjoying freshly squeezed orange juice and a range of lemon and lime desserts. I also have a huge container of lemon and lime juice ice cubes waiting to be tossed into hummus and other cooking.

The downside of enjoying this bounty is that my compost bin is overflowing with citrus peel.

I’ve been exploring useful ways to use the peel. My favourite so far is to make bees wax candles in lime peel.

How to make citrus beeswax candles

You'll need:

• Bees wax. I had some left over from when we had bees. If you don't have beeswax perhaps you could melt down some old candles.
• Hemp twine. I'm a huge fan of hemp twine - I use it in the kitchen, to wrap presents and I recently discovered it can be used as a candle wick.
• Citrus. Something with a relatively flat bottom like the above over-ripe limes would be best so that your candles don't wobble too much. 

To make:

• Cut the citrus in half and squeeze out the juice. and of course don't waste the juice. If you don't have a use perhaps you can make a lime and coconut face scrub?
• Pull away as much of the flesh as you can from the citrus peel and either use straight away or set aside to dry.
• Cut the hemp twine into short lengths, with the length depending on the size of your citrus.
• Melt the beeswax in a pot and then pour into the citrus halves. Leave the wax to set a little before poking in the hemp twine wicks.

They work surprisingly well and smell delicious.

I've also been drying some citrus peel to use as fire starters. Their high oil content make them perfect fire starters. To dry the peel I put the peel on a tray and leave it in the oven when its cooling down and move it outside on sunny days.

Next I'm going to try cooking an egg in an orange peel over a camp fire and rubbing peel all over my face. I might also try this orange peel chutney or perhaps these gorgeous orange peel bowls.