Halloween Pumpkin Carving

Dear all,
You may have noticed that I haven't blogged in a long time. I have become a bit side-tracked by school but hopefully now I can get back on track. Halloween is coming up so I thought that I would do a post about it. I am going to include some top tips on carving pumpkins. I hope you enjoy it!

I was carving some pumpkins today with a friend and it was really fun! We started off by scrubbing the pumpkins to remove any dirt and then we cut the top off. A top tip at this stage is to cut across instead of down so you end up with a 'sliced' lid. This works well because when you light a candle inside the pumpkin for a long time, the insides start to shrivel up and shrink inside and last year the lid fell in one of our pumpkins! Next comes the messy bit- scooping out the pulp and the seeds from inside. We found that the best technique was to simply go in with our hands! You will get messy but it is the quickest and easiest way. We scraped around the edges with spoons to make it a bit smoother but the majority of the flesh is easier to get out by hand. Once the pumpkins were prepared, we picked our designs. I looked on the internet for inspiration and there were some amazing pumpkins but I decided to go for a simpler design! I found it useful to draw in the design first with a felt tip and then go in with the knife because a felt tip can rub out really easily and it is difficult to cut out shapes if you don't have guidelines. I am now going to list some dos and don'ts about choosing your pumpkin design.

Do- use inspiration of the internet. It can help you get ideas and your pumpkin is never going to look exactly the same so don't worry about copying!
Don't- attempt a ridiculously hard design if you don't have the resources to carve it properly (sharp, thin blades)
Do- pick straight lines over curves. Lines are much easier to cut out whereas achieving a good curve is very challenging!
Don't- cut out shapes too close to each other otherwise the thin bit of pumpkin in the middle of the two shapes will become very weak and may collapse
Do- use your imagination when drawing on your design. It doesn't have to be a face, you could carve something completely different
Don't- Carve out too much otherwise the pumpkin will be weak and won't hold.

With those dos and don'ts you will be sorted if you ever need to carve a pumpkin!

People are not only carving pumpkins this Halloween but baking with them too! I have seen pumpkin flavoured goods all over social media in the last month whether it is pumpkin pie cupcakes or pumpkin spiced lattés, pumpkins are everywhere! At first I thought that pumpkin might not be that nice in a cupcake but looking at some of the recipes, it actually sounds quite nice! Most of the recipes that I have looked at use pumpkin puree and combine it with spices such as cinnamon for a delicious warming flavour. I love cinnamon so I am eager to try one of the recipes out at some point!

I hope you enjoyed my post about pumpkin carving. If any of my readers have any more tips or have used pumpkin in baking, leave a comment below!
Bye!