Charcuterie Experts Share Their Spookiest Halloween Boards and Tips for Making One Yourself

Halloween isn’t all about candy.

Decorative meat and cheese plates are all the rage this Halloween. TikTok is flooded with endless spooky inspiration, but turning gruyere into ghosts and mortadella into monsters can seem scarier than just putting chips in a bowl. PEOPLE spoke with two butchery experts to get their tips on making scarily good Halloween-themed plates.

Tara Panasiuk, 33, known as @the_magnolia_mercantile online, has been sharing seasonal DIY projects with her 830,000 social followers for four years. When it comes to preparing her festive snack spreads, she thinks outside the box, sometimes opting to place cheese and crackers in miniature cauldrons or atop lantern-shaped glasses.

“I like to attract people with my looks,” Panasiuk tells PEOPLE. “Finding cute little homes for all the candy, that’s what I love to do.”

Tara Panasiuk uses small cauldrons for individual meat plates.

Tara Panasiuk/the_magnolia_mercantile/Instagram (2)

When using festive dishes, the lifestyle influencer says she likes to keep the actual food simpler. She uses “all the basics” for her charcuterie pans — like cheese cubes, grapes and crackers — but finds a few functional and modern items to add more flair.

“Instead of just putting meat on it, I took little cute toothpicks and put meat and cheese on just one of them,” she says.

If you’d rather decorate a classic wooden cheese board without the dishes, Panasiuk says it’s all about taking advantage of the right colors.

For her jack-o’-lantern board, “I just used a regular cutting board and used orange snacks and navy blue snacks for the eyes, nose, and mouth — easy!” she says.

Dana Berbenich, owner of the deli shop Boards by Dana in Bel Air, Md., is known for turning cured meats into skulls and chunks of cheese into Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice characters.

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“One of my passions in this business is teaching people how to do things, and I’m always happy to make a video that generates a lot of views and that people save and share,” she tells PEOPLE.

“It’s not as hard as it looks when you really get into it,” adds Berbenich, 37, who also teaches classes in person and online.

If you’re intimidated by folding meat and cheese origami, follow Berbenich’s lead with cheese cutouts. “I always make brie on a Halloween board because there are so many possibilities to play with it. So you’ll see some with witch hats, bats, mummies, cut into brie and then filled with jam,” she says.

Dana Berbenich makes a cut in her cheese and then fills it with jam.

Grazing Room/Dana Panels

Berbenich says adding props is probably the easiest way to add holiday flair.

“On my boards you will see a lot of small kettles that I use for olives and pickles or jams. I use fake spiders, skeleton hands, little skulls and things like that,” she says.

She also adds edible eyes to olive holes or on top of cheese slices for an easy spooky upgrade. “If you’re afraid to really dig into the design aspect of things or the more intricate details, you can always just rely on that,” she says.

Both Berbenich and Panasiuk say that party and craft stores, like Party City and Michael’s or Amazon, are the best places to stock up on Halloween goodies.

Dana Berbenich uses mini skeletons on her Halloween boards.

Grazing Room/Dana Panels (2)

For tips on what actually belongs on the board, Berbenich suggests leaning on prosciutto “because prosciutto can look like human flesh,” she says with a laugh. Blackberries, wine-soaked cheeses, and other darker-colored products are also a good idea. In general, he likes to include four cheeses, at least two meats, salty-sweet crisps and three types of fresh fruit on each board.

“My approach is always to choose ingredients that have a nice variety of taste, texture, both in the mouth and visually, and then color. When it’s a regular board, I really want to incorporate a lot of color,” says Berbenich. “But actually when it’s a Halloween board, I like to lean toward the darker side.”

Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education