Mini sugar pumpkin

My mini sugar pumpkins have a skin so hard that I cannot get into them.  Well maybe I could with an axe.
Has anyone any suggestions what to do with them and why it has happened.

Fresh seed this year, I cannot remember what company is printed on the packet but I have it at the allotment, I may ask them what the problem is.

You may not agree, but it's seen as a advantage - tough skins mean long storage for squash and pumpkins 

In one of Madhur Jaffrey books, she mentions using an axe to split open squash.

I have been known to drop squash onto a hard (clean) surface to break them open. Mostly, I open them up with a cleaver or heavy knife.

As far as I know, squash and pumpkins are supposed to have hard skins, as mumofstig and Ema say.

I grew a mini squash one year that was amazingly tough.  I found the easiest way in was a short bladed kitchen knife, but it needs to be a sharp and strong one.  The layer of skin and flesh is quite thin, so a short knife gets through to the centre and is easier to control than a large knife, when you are dealing with small fruits.

If you get the fruit secured in a cloth (to protect your hand), pierce through the skin with the knife tip, then slowly rotate the squash and cut round.  You should find the skin almost cracks open ahead of the blade.

The ones I grew were very sweet.  Probably the sweetest ones I have ever grown.  I just scooped out the seeds and roasted halves in the oven, with some butter, salt and pepper in the cavity.  The whole lot went on the plate and we scooped the flesh out to eat them.   

If you still can't open them, put them in the oven whole on a moderate heat.  I saw Jamie Oliver doing this with a butternut on the TV and tried it myself with a squash.  After an hour or so, the very outer skin flakes off and the rest has just disappeared into the rest of the flesh.  Its a bit more messy getting the seeds out, but if it means you actually get to eat your crop, its worth trying 

I had to try it as I had just assumed they would explode if put in whole, but long steady baking works just fine 

It will be interesting to hear how they taste.  With a name like Mini Sugar, they sound like a really sweet one as well.  I wonder of it is just a characteristic of the very sweet mini fruited varieties, to have such rock hard skins 

Yay 

It must be the less dense flesh and bigger pulpy bit in a pumpkin that lets it cook quicker, because my squash took quite a lot longer, but as you say, you can experiment with timings and at least you got past the armour plating to eat it     

Vanilla in savoury dishes is quite trendy you know      Pumpkin bread is nice and vanilla flavoured toast would be good with a light flavoured jam.  Or maybe a brownie or cake recipe might be worth a try