Take a Hand Mixer to Your Jack-o’-Lantern

I have never been too invested in pumpkin carving. I like looking at jack-o’-lanterns, and I have a deep respect for those who take the art of carving them seriously, but I don’t have the skills nor the attention span to manage much more than a goofy face myself. I do, however, appreciate pumpkin tips that make carving a little faster, easier, and neater.

Enter my girl Babs with a handy TikTok trick for rapidly removing a pumpkin’s innards.

Babs actually has several jack-o’-lantern hacks in her TikTok, some of which—carving out the bottom instead of the top, using Vaseline to help your work last longer—we’ve covered before. Taking a hand mixer to the inside was a new one for me, so I decided to buy a pumpkin and give it a spin.

It worked pretty well! As Bab’s promised, the hand mixer made short work of the goopy guts. It loosened the strings, seeds, and other fleshy bits, leaving them for me to remove with a few simple scoops of a spoon. The process took all of three minutes, and I was only using one beater. (I lost the other one; it’s a good thing I hate baking.)

There are, however, a few strategies you should consider to ensure success. Watching the video, you’ll probably notice Babs makes quite a large circular cut into the base of her pumpkin. Doing so makes it easier to get the mixer in there. I made a smaller hole in the bottom of mine, and had a hard time reaching the bottom of the pumpkin with my hand mixer. (I eventually got there, but it took some awkward angling.) A larger entry point will make it easier to reach all of the strands and seeds, especially if you’re working with a larger pumpkin (or a small mixer, or combination of both).

And a warning: Refrain from lingering in one spot for too long. I got a little too aggressive in one spot and my beater began to scrape away at the squash’s sturdy walls. This was not a big deal for me, a carver of simple faces, but could cause issues if you favor a more elaborate style.