Pumpkin Carving With Simple Cutlery

Thank you for writing in to ask the question about how to carve the pumpkin I did in the Cinnamon Pumpkin Mantou recipe recently. I hope that my carving experience which uses simple cutlery to do it be able to help you to carve your first pumpkin too.

In fact, I ran across this decent looking pumpkin from the grocery store while doing my usual grocery shopping. When I saw it sitting there in a plastic tray, I quickly picked it up and decided to bring it home. Though the pumpkin is small and not in the orange color like those classic pumpkins, the shape is just perfect, I just felt that it is the one that I wanted to carve on.

I have always been dreaming to be able to carve a pumpkin for my home decor in October, a big orange pumpkin that you see or perhaps carved before. Through many years of searching in the local markets, no luck, I can’t find them selling here, except those green Japanese Pumpkins that I bought. I guessed that the skin of this Japanese pumpkin is thicker and should be harder for me to carve, but I don’t care much, I just want to carve on it.

Since this is my first pumpkin carving, I have to play safe by not doing anything difficult and too challenging, so I decided to carve a classic Jack ‘O Lantern look. I have no proper tools but I did it, I did it without much dilemma (besides some minor sore fingers) by using only simple cutlery found from my kitchen, such as steak knife, spoon, melon scoop and fruit-pick, hooray!!! If you would to do it with proper tooling, perhaps this link will help. For more adventurous carving, you may want to include something more advance like pumpkin skin carving to just reveal the pith. Get some carving ideas here.

By the way, the pumpkin in the picture shown above is already about a week old, the color has changed and it is drying up and going to rot very soon. I have soaked it in the diluted bleach solution after carving to keep it staying longer but I didn’t spray the solution everyday to keep it fresh and hydrated, so, it is drying up and rotting, especially under the hot and humid climate here. Never mind, I can always carve another one soon.