Carving the face is the fun bit. Getting there is the problem. Before you can do anything clever you have to get the lid off, drag out a load of stringy pulp and seeds, and then thin the inside wall enough that a candle actually shows through. With a kitchen knife and a dessert spoon, that’s half an hour of sore wrists and a slippery handle.
Most of that misery comes down to using the wrong tools.
How I’d go about it
- Cut the lid at an angle. Point the blade in towards the stem so the lid comes out as a cone rather than a straight plug. That way it sits on a ledge when you put it back instead of dropping inside.
- Scrape, don’t scoop. A spoon just slides over the stringy stuff. What you want is something with a serrated edge that tears the fibres off the wall as you drag it down.
- Thin the face side only. You don’t need to scrape the whole pumpkin thin. Pick the side you’re carving and work that wall down to about an inch thick. Shine a torch through from the inside and you’ll see where it’s still too chunky.
- Tape the design on and trace it. Prick along the lines through the paper with something pointed, take the paper off, and you’ve got a dot-to-dot to cut along.
- Saw, don’t slice. Little up-and-down strokes with a thin saw blade follow curves far better than a knife, and they don’t snap the bits between the eyes.
The kit that covers all of that
You can do it with odds and ends from the drawer, but a proper carving set makes it a lot less annoying, especially if you’ve got kids queueing up for a turn. The Greatever pumpkin carving kit is a decent one. It’s seven tools with stainless steel blades and chunky orange plastic handles that are easy to spot in a pile of pumpkin mess:
- a big scraper scoop with a serrated edge, which is the one that does most of the hard work
- a small saw and two double-sided saws for the cutting
- an etching tool for shallow detail where you don’t want to cut all the way through
- a drill for neat round holes
- a small knife
It also comes with 12 paper stencils and a zip bag to keep everything together, so the tools don’t end up scattered around the cutlery drawer until next October.
Bear in mind these are sharp little saws, and the listing itself says children should use them with a grown-up. I’d hand the scoop to younger kids and keep the saws for whoever’s doing the cutting.
You can find the Greatever 7-piece pumpkin carving kit on Amazon. And keep the seeds. Rinse them, dry them, toss them with oil and salt and roast them. That’s the best bit of the whole evening, if you ask me.
