This Viral Pumpkin Carving Hack Will Make Decorating Faster and Easier
Who knew cookie cutters and a hand mixer would cut your pumpkin carving process in half?
With only a few days left until Halloween, it’s vital that your spooky decor, including your personal pumpkin patch, be ready for trick-or-treaters. Carving pumpkins can be a huge, messy pain in the gourd though, and who wants to spend their whole weekend cleaning up pumpkin guts when there are more important holiday activities you can be doing?
Lucky for us, Barbara “Babs” Costello of @BrunchWithBabs fame on Instagram, released a new pumpkin carving video with tons of tips to help you create the best jack-o-lanterns on the block. Sneak peek: some of them involve tools you already have lying around your kitchen.
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Here are the best tips from The Do’s and Don’ts of Pumpkin Carving:
1. Give that pumpkin a seat… on your lap
Costello says you’ll have a much easier time cutting, drawing and carving your pumpkin while it’s steady on your lap — not on top of a table while you’re standing over it.
TikTok account @ProblemSolved also suggests plopping your pumpkin into a large bowl, stem-side down, if you want to create more stability on a table.
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2. Trace out your design first
This is a tried and true trick many pro carvers swear by, but Costello kicks it up a notch by using a red-colored dry erase marker to draw the design. “You can get rid of the lines after,” she explains. Anything that doesn’t wipe off will blend in better than a black marker or pencil would.
3. Go from the bottom up
Instead of cutting a hole at the top, where the stem is, Costello recommends cutting a wider hole at the bottom of your pumpkin. TikTok user @lindsayroggenbuck also swears by this hack: “It keeps the moisture inside the pumpkin longer,” she explains, which prevents it from drying out quickly.
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4. Get rid of pumpkin guts quicker
Now it’s time to dust off that hand mixer you swore you’d use but is just sitting in a box somewhere in your kitchen. Tackling the pumpkin guts — the strings, seeds and goo inside the pumpkin — will be much easier if you use an electric hand mixer to catch them all for you.
“It literally cuts the job in half,” Costello says.
5. Cut it out
If the thought of using a knife to cut out your design spooks you, Costello suggests using cookie cutters and a soft-headed mallet hammer to bust out the shapes.
“The face combinations are endless,” says TikTok account @TheHalloweenPage, which also used this method in a recent video. “Spook-tackular and so simple.”
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6. Glossify your pumpkin in vaseline
Costello gives her jack-o-lanterns a chapstick treatment using vaseline to cover the open/cut areas of the pumpkin. “It will keep it moist… and last for about one to two weeks,” she explains.
7. Spice it up
Finally, Costello sprinkles a little cinnamon inside of her pumpkins, “for festive pumpkin spice smell when a candle is lit inside the pumpkin.”
If you’re not crazy about using candles and real flames, fake candles, LED lights and even Christmas lights are a perfect (and safe) substitute.
Now that you’re a pumpkin carving pro, what other tips can you think of?
