14 Recipes For a Spooktacular Halloween Char-BOO-Terie Board!

I’ve been getting reader requests to share more recipes, and since my favorite season is almost upon us, I thought I’d share this super fun Halloween spread I made last year! I make charcuterie boards all the time, and last year I fell down a rabbit hole of YouTube videos that were chock-full of spooky, Halloween-themed charcuterie ideas – that’s like combining my two favorite things! I got so much inspiration that just had make a spooktacular Halloween Char-BOO-Terie board for us that was overflowing with frightful foods. I’ve included the recipes for each one of these terrifying treats below – you can make any of these snacks individually, but many of the items share ingredients if you want to make it a full spread!

1. Pumpkin Cheeseball

My pumpkin cheeseball was the pièce de résistance of this Char-BOO-Terie board. I found this recipe on a YouTube channel called The House for Hosting, in her “HALLOWEEN PARTY PREP 2022” video. Not only does it look fantastic, but it is so delicious – I ended up making another variation of it later, which I’ll be sharing in a future post! She has the full recipe in the description box of her video; this is my variation on her recipe. I eyeballed some of the ingredients for mine because I made some substitutions, and I just added as much as looked sufficient. But you can refer to her video for precise measurements on everything!

Ingredients:

16oz softened cream cheese
Ranch seasoning mix, to taste (I have one of those giant canisters of Ranch mix from Costco, so I just added it until it looked and tasted good!)
2 cups shredded fiesta blend cheese
Chopped mini sweet peppers (Reserve 1 stem for the pumpkin lid)
Chopped green onion
Black olives (For decoration)

With gloved hands, thoroughly mix 1 cup of the shredded cheese with all of the ingredients except the olives and begin to form into a ball. Put a large piece of cling film on the counter and sprinkle some shredded cheese on it. Place the ball on top of the shredded cheese and cover with remaining shredded cheese; use the cling film to help guide and press the shredded cheese onto the ball to coat it as you wrap it up. Add a second layer of cling film, then take several large rubber bands and wrap around the ball in sections to create the ridges of the pumpkin. The House for Hosting demonstrates this in her video!

Once the cheese ball is wrapped with cling film and rubber bands, put it in the fridge overnight. When ready to serve, unwrap carefully, place on a platter, and put the sweet pepper stem on top of the “Pumpkin”. Then cut a black olive into triangles and gently press onto the front of the cheeseball to create the pumpkin’s face. (The face was my own little addition to the recipe, and I thought it turned out so cute!)

You can pair this cheeseball with any of your favorite sides for dipping and spreading, like crackers, chips and veggies. I served mine with carrots, radish slices, grape tomatoes, low carb tortilla chips, and Spooky Sweet Peppers!

2. Spooky Sweet Peppers

This was a cute and fun idea I got from Together to Eat’s “Halloween Snack Board” video. I substituted peanut butter for icing and it worked great!

Ingredients:

Mini sweet peppers
Candy eyes
Peanut butter

Carefully dot a small swirl of peanut butter on the top of the sweet pepper. Press a candy eye onto the peanut butter. Repeat on the other side.

3. Homemade Keto Tortilla Chips

To go with our pumpkin cheeseball, I quickly whipped up some homemade keto tortilla chips. I’m not sure where I first saw this recipe – Keto Twins, maybe? – but they’re very simple to make. I take zero carb tortillas, put them on a cutting board, and cut them with a pizza cutter to make triangles. I spray a baking sheet with cooking spray, put the chips on the tray, spray again and season with salt, pepper, etc. I usually cook them on my oven’s “Air fry” mode at 350 degrees for just a few minutes. These cook FAST so keep a close eye out, they go from “Not cooked” to “Charcoal” very quickly!

4. Radish Eyeballs

I can’t tell you where I first saw this idea, because I came across it around 2004 or 2005 – probably on some defunct website that I was accessing on dial-up! But this has been a staple in my Halloween repertoire ever since, because it’s such a classic!

You’ll need:

Radishes
Green olives stuffed with pimento

Take a peeler and/or sharp paring knife, and cut the ends off a radish. Peel the radish, carefully leaving several thin strips of the peel behind – the goal is to make them look like the veins of a bloodshot eye. Carve out a hole in the center of the radish, just big enough to squeeze an olive in – the olive and pimento in the middle create the appearance of the iris and pupil.

These eyeballs are great to place around your charcuterie board and in salads. Because I was serving veggies to go with the cheeseball, I also used some of the eyeballs to accent a spiderweb bowl filled with cherry tomatoes, for an extra spooky touch!

5. Prosciutto Mummy

Another way to use your radish eyeballs is to make a Prosciutto Mummy! To make this, place two radish eyeballs on your cheese board or other serving dish, and arrange the Prosciutto in strips around the eyeballs like a mask to form the appearance of mummy eyes. I thought this was a great spin on one of my favorite Halloween appetizers, and just the thing for a charcuterie board. There’s lot of different versions of this appetizer so I’m not sure which video I first saw it in, but this Chefclub video I watched last year has a variation of it.

6. Radish Strips

After I made my eyeballs, I cut the remaining radishes into sections and placed it around the charcuterie board. These were a great accompaniment to my cheeseball and dip, and they’re also low carb/keto-friendly!

7. Buffa-Ranch Pumpkin Face Dip

I made a quick dip shaped like a Jack-o’-lantern by taking a small bowl and squeezing some Heinz Buffa-Ranch around the bottom to form a large circle, adding a small squeeze at the top to make little line, representing the stem of the pumpkin. Tip: You can dab a paper towel around the edges to clean up the lines and remove any splatters. Then I cut some small pieces of black olive and arranged them into a pumpkin face.

8. Ghost Cheese Slices

This is a simple and fun way to add a haunting touch to your cheese board! I can’t remember if I saw this in a video or if I was just inspired myself by The Crafty Gal Carla’s use of cookie cutters on cheese – more on that in snack #10!

You’ll need:

Slices of any white cheese of your choice, such as white cheddar, mozzarella or provolone
Black olives

Take a ghost-shaped cookie cutter to cut otherworldly shapes into each piece of cheese. Place on your cheese board and rest two small pieces of black olive on top to make eyes.

9. Witch Fingers with Blood Dipping Sauce

This is another one of those good old Halloween standards! I saw this one a lot last year – I can’t pinpoint which videos put the spell on me to make these, but there’s a bunch of great ones on YouTube.
Ingredients:

Hot Dogs
Cheese
Ketchup

Take a knife and carve out a small, fingernail-shaped divot in each hot dog. Score the hotdog above the “Nail”, cutting a few small lines to resemble knuckles. Cut a small piece of cheese and rest it in the “Nailbed.” Tip: this is a great use for the trimmed portions of cheese if you make the Ghost Cheese Slices!

Place on a foil-lined tray sprayed with cooking spray and broil for just a few minutes until the hot dog starts to brown. Serve with Blood Dipping Sauce, AKA ketchup! I put mine in my OXO Measuring Beaker for the extra mad scientist touch.

10. RIP Cheese

This is another great use for any trimmed portions of cheese leftover from the Ghost Cheese Slices: Epitaph cheese! I got this idea from The Crafty Gal Carla’s “HALLOWEEN CHARCUTERIE BOARD” video. She used tiny alphabet cookie cutters to make her letters, which looks SO cute, but I didn’t have those when I made my tombstone cheese so I just cut it out freehand with a knife.

11. Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

This is a classic staple – and as you can tell from the pumpkins on the table, we had plenty of pumpkin seeds to roast! I carved the pumpkins to look like Jai, myself, and Keeli, in case you were wondering. 😀

I rinsed and dried the seeds and then sprayed a baking sheet with cooking spray, lined the pan with the seeds in an even layer and seasoned them. You can season the seeds to your liking – I believe I did paprika and salt on these, but it’s totally customizable to your taste. I cooked them in my oven on “Air fry” mode until done – this recipe recommends cooking at 350 degrees, which is usually my go-to.

12. Biohazard Mozzarella Eyeballs

I saw this spooky app in Lauren Nicholsen’s “HALLOWEEN PARTY RECIPES, DECOR AND SET UP” video, and it’s extremely simple and delicious!

Ingredients:

Tub of Mozzarella pearls
Olive oil
Crushed red pepper
Candy eyes

Stir some olive oil and crushed red peppers into the tub of mozzarella pearls to taste. In Lauren’s video, she took spooky toothpicks and skewered rows of mozzarella pearls to serve on a tray. For mine, I left them in the original container, then added plastic bat toothpicks and two candy eyes. Then I wrapped a piece of “Biohazard” tape around the tub for a quick and easy decoration! I had originally bought this tape as part of my tongue-in-cheek social distancing candy bowl during the height of the pandemic, and now have a roll of it in my Halloween supplies for just such occasions.

13. Popcorn Pumpkin

This is a super easy way to add some Halloween flair to your snacks! I found this fun Wilton Jack-O-Lantern cake pan at Goodwill for $2.50 while I was shopping for my Halloween costume last year – bargain! For this snack board, I popped a bag of microwave popcorn and then used the cake pan as a festive serving tin. This would be a really cute way to serve snacks for your kids during movie night in October!

14. Mummy Brie

From that same “HALLOWEEN CHARCUTERIE BOARD” video by The Crafty Gal Carla, I was inspired to make this awesome Mummmy Brie!

Ingredients:

Brie cheese wheel
Candy eyes

Unwrap your wheel of cheese, and carefully slice the very top layer off. Set the thin layer of white rind, AKA “Bloomy rind”, on your cutting board and slice it into thin strips. Place some of the strips back onto the cheese wheel to create a mummy effect, then add two candy eyes at the top.

And there you have it – fourteen frightful recipes! Which one was your favorite?