Your Halloween Party Needs a Scary Charcuterie Board

Despite all the candy and colorfully packaged cake and cookies in the grocery store, Halloween isn't actually much of a food holiday-especially when compared to the big hitters like Thanksgiving. Since I'm training to be a long distance runner, I have less room on my plate for a bag of Twix, anyway. Suffice to say, I was having trouble getting hyped for Halloween-until scary charcuterie boards crossed my path.

A friend of mine sent me an Instagram reel from Petal & Platter which featured some truly alarming, but clever ways to dress a cheese and meat platter for Halloween. (Brie cheese Pennywise, the clown from Stephen King's It, is almost too much for me to look at.) After getting over my initial scary clown reaction, I was inspired. There might be hope for Halloween as a food holiday. At the very least, it can be a substantial-snack holiday.

The two most important parts of a Halloween charcuterie board

I noticed a couple patterns in the Petal & Platter charcuterie and cheese boards. The key is to have one big, central spooky item. To name a few examples from her platter, maybe it's a skull with olive features, the face of the Scream mask with a blackberry hood, or creepy-ass Pennywise's face with pepperoni hair.

The other pattern I noticed is that you should probably use brie cheese to make that central item. Brie comes in flat circles, instead of wedges or rectangles, which gives you more flat surface area to work with. The cheese has a white rind, which makes it a great canvas for using jam as ink" to draw details. It's soft but not without integrity, so you can easily cut a general shape out of the wheel without it cracking. I recommend opting for double cream brie; triple can get a little oozy once cut.

Other than that, you don't have to change that much from a regular charcuterie board you would make for, say, Valentine's Day. Just make it weird when you see the opportunity. Fill in the spaces with nuts, crackers, other sliced cheeses, blood-red jams, and lots of eyeballs-made from olives and creatively carved cheeses, of course. You can loosely carve sliced white cheese to make ghosts, and, yes, salami roses also make sense in this morbid scene.

I found it easier to use the help of a somewhat pre-sliced selection, like this charcuterie tasting board from Columbus Craft Meats-it gives you a solid variety to start with. I added a wheel of brie to my artist's palette, and boosted my board content with some Cracker Barrel cracker cuts, dried apricots, olives, and candied pecans.

How to make a Halloween charcuterie board

To make this charcuterie graveyard, I suggest having a separate cutting board to work off of for slicing and doing the messy work, and a nice presentation board.

1. Start with your big statement piece: the brie cheese tombstone.

Slice two straight sides, preserving the natural curve of the wheel for the top. Slice a straight bottom and you've got a good looking grave marker.

Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann 2. If you'd like, make cream cheese grass"

I thought it was a nice touch and it allowed me to stick short crackers into the cream cheese so they could stand up like other gravestones. Mix a few drops of green food dye into whipped cream cheese, about a half cup to a cup. Use a spoon to drop blobs along the cheese board. Use a chopping motion to spike it like grass.

Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann 3. Make a couple residents

Make a few white cheese ghosts out of cheddar, or another white cheese that won't flop over. I used a paring knife to carve out a ghostly shape and pressed in black sesame seeds for facial features.

Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann 4. Arrange the statement pieces

Place the brie up against some grassy cream cheese. Stick short crackers or thick-cut pepperoni halves into the grass to represent other graves. Add the cheese ghosts.

5. Finish the tombstone

Use a red jam to write RIP on the big brie gravestone. I used a toothpick to make it look more gory. Halloween foods are immune to logic, so adding bloody writing makes perfect sense here.

Watch out for those olives. Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann 6. Fill in the blanks

The big tombstone and two ghosts give enough context for the eater so they can figure out what the display is without any more cues. Never forget, its primary purpose is as a meat and cheese board. Add rows of sliced cheese, a pile of crackers, folded chorizo, and some dips. A small bowl of green goblin olive eyes, pecan dirt and rock piles, and a meaty rosette to show respect for the dead.

Even if you're not making a graveyard, the steps are roughly the same: Big statement brie, other Halloween anchor pieces, arrange them on the board, then fill in the blanks. Add some bloody jam blobs, green ooze, or monster eyeballs and you'll be ready for a proper Halloween snack whether you're entertaining friends or settling down for a spooky movie night with the family.