How To Carve A Perfect Pumpkin

How to select and carve the perfect pumpkin for a decorative scary, fun filled Halloween.

This ancient old tradition sitting on your doorstep,personalized and skillfully carved by you and your family. Invite some friends over for pre-pumpkin carving and enjoy the laughter as you create and learn how to carve a pumpkin for Halloween

• Draw a circle around the pumpkin stem . This will be the lid.
• Doesn't have to be a perfect circle ,maybe even a triangle or star. Cut a small notch in the circle so the lids fits well when replaced. Another successful method is to cut from the bottom,some find it easier to lift the whole pumpkin up when lighting candle.
• Carefully begin cutting along your line using your boning knife. Its a good idea to angle your knife slightly to stop the lid from falling inside.
• Once lid is removed, cut and scrape any pulp away and discard.
• Now also remove pulp (pumpkin flesh) from inside, pumpkin for Halloween always means I have lots of pumpkin seeds to roast later ,healthy crunchy and fantastic for salads. Saving the pumpkin flesh pulp, and freezing, will make great pumpkin dippers or muffins or delicious soup later (see link further down) for Easy Pumpkin Soup <<or click here.
• How To Carve A Pumpkin For Halloween will look great the more flesh you scrape out as the light will shine even brighter!
• Visualize where your candle will stand and make that area nice n flat (by scraping) on the bottom
• Draw you Jack-O-Lantern on the front of your pumpkin, using simple clear lines.
• Use a paring knife, to cut along your design slowly and carefully.

Selection Process:

Choose pumpkins that have an even orange colour, the brighter the better. Look out for bruises,nicks or discoloration ,definitely these will not make a great looking Jack-O-Lantern!

Also make sure when choosing your pumpkin to check its not ripe or over-ripe ( if its feel slightly soft or squishy ) leave him on the farm.

How To Carve Pumpkin For Halloween

• Uniform bright orange colour
• No bruises ,nicks, warty bits
• Not ripe or soft

Once you have made your selection ,preparing how to carve a pumpkin for Halloween is just around the corner.

Never carry your pumpkin by the stem!

Since this becomes your handle on the top of the lighted lantern. If however ,you discover later you have the almost perfect pumpkin with no stem , don't worry , just use toothpicks. Of course carve out the bottom now ,instead of the top ,and sit your pumpkin over top of the candle, instead of placing the candle from the top.

Patterns For Your Pumpkin Halloween

Either design them yourself,keeping the lines simple ( since these will be easier to carve) or download some patterns off the Internet. The library also has some excellant ideas and easy enough to photocopy there , bring home and adapt.