Ever want to freak out your kids, guests, or friends on Halloween?! Behold our scary Severed Hand Halloween Snack Board that will impress AND gross out your victims {insert creepy, evil laugh here}! 😈 Our severed hand appetizer looks totally real, even though it's just a cheese dip draped in prosciutto. Equal parts yum and yuck!
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We also have more 🎃 Halloween appetizer and snack recipes. One of the easiest is our goofy apple teeth, and the most fun (IMO) is our deliciously messy silly monster pretzels.
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😎 Keep it Simple
For this Halloween snack board, my goal was to make it easy AND scary. I've seen lots of fun, gory body-part Halloween appetizers online {Chef Genevieve's elegant and artistic severed arm is definitely incredible}. Many use panino rolls, lots of herbs, fancier cheeses, and very involved charcuterie accompaniments. But I wanted to make this recipe simple, cheap and geared towards kids. Here's how:
- Do a severed hand instead of arm. Faster and fewer ingredients needed.
- Use a pre-herbed goat cheese. No additional seasonings needed.
- Good ol' string cheese works great! You don't need panino rolls, which can be expensive and sometimes hard to find.
- Buy canned green olives for the fingernails - nothing fancy.
- Your Halloween snack board should just have your kids' fave snacks on the side (and you might already have them). Mine had grapes and crackers.
📌 Supplies
- Parchment or wax paper - this is a great surface for making your severed hand. I've also seen people use plastic wrap.
- Permanent marker - this is for tracing your (or your kid's) hand. A pencil or pen could also work, but not as well on slippery paper.
- Cheese mix - I combined cream cheese and herbed goat cheese. Easy!
- Cheese sticks - I used the standard kid staple: mozzarella string cheese. But almost any type of cheese stick will work.
- Prosciutto - this is my preferred "flesh" for the hand, but very thinly sliced salami could also work! 4 ounces of prosciutto is plenty for an adult-sized hand.
- Roasted bell peppers - optional but it enhances the flavor and makes for excellent bloody insides! I cut the peppers into really thin, long slices.
- Olives - also optional, but this is seriously the finishing touch! We used green olives because it made the nails look fungal and even grosser!
📝 Instructions
Step 1: Mash together the cream cheese & goat cheese. Set aside.
Step 2: Trace your hand on wax paper. Spread half the cheese mix inside your hand tracing using a small spatula.
Step 3: Lay down strips of roasted red pepper and string cheese on the hand.
Step 4: Carefully spread remaining cheese on top, and drape prosciutto over the whole hand.
Step 5: The finishing touch! Add one halved olive to each finger as fingernails. Put severed hand in fridge until ready to serve.
Assemble your creepy Halloween snack board and get ready to scare your people!
Have fun with this, friends! It's not everyday that people get to eat a life-like cheese hand, haha! So, keep it creepy 😈
➡ How to Transfer Your Severed Hand to a Plate
If you try to scoop the severed hand off the wax paper with a spatula, it'll stick and won't work (trust me, I tried)! So, here's my flip trick for easily transferring your severed hand to a serving plate. Let's call the hand Chucky, ha! 🔪🩸
Take Chucky out of the fridge, keeping your hand underneath him. Now hold your clean sheet of wax paper on top of Chucky and flip your hands so Chucky is now upside down. Remove the top sheet stuck to Chucky and replace it with an upside down plate. Still keeping your hand under Chucky and your other hand on top of the upside down plate, flip your hands so Chucky is rightside up on the plate. Finally, remove the wax paper. Hopefully that makes sense!
✔️ Expert Tips & Tricks
- If able, take the soft cheeses out of the fridge 1 hour ahead of time. If your cheese is still too firm, microwave it in very small increments of time, like 10 seconds.
- Here's the opposite advice: keep prosciutto in the fridge right up until it's time to use it. Prosciutto is so thin and pliable that as it warms, it gets harder to handle.
- Find something heavy to hold down your wax paper so it doesn't slide around. I used some pumpkins we got at a pumpkin patch - functional & festive! 🎃
- Use a small spatula to help sculpt your hand. Run it along the tracing of the hand to help separate the fingers and set all the cheese in place.
- Presentation tip: tuck the prosciutto under the cheese a little so you have cleaner lines.
- Refrigerate your prosciutto hand for at least 10 minutes before serving. This helps firm up the cheese so it's a lot easier to transfer to an actual plate.
❓FAQ
Put more prosciutto strands and pepper strips at the base of the hand, hanging out like flesh and veins. Find a sharp knife and either stick in in the middle of the hand (like the hand was stabbed) or lay it next to the hand with fake blood on the tip.
Treat this snack board as you would any charcuterie plate. It shouldn't sit out at room temperature for more than a couple hours.
You can make this ahead and refrigerate your board for a couple days, covered with saran wrap or tinfoil. Just wait until serving before you add crackers or something that could get stale or soggy in the fridge. After everyone has dug in, the leftovers can be messy and the hand unrecognizable (ha!). So, anything that's worth saving, store in tupperware and keep refrigerated for a couple days.
I recommend prosciutto for the "flesh" of the hand. Its fleshy color and sinewy fat strands really bring home the gross-out factor! Very thinly sliced salami could also work!
🎃 More Halloween Snack Ideas
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🩸 Severed Hand Halloween Snack Board
Equipment
- 2 sheets wax paper or parchment paper
- 1 small spatula or flat utensil for spreading cheese
Ingredients
- 8 oz cream cheese soft enough to mold
- 5 oz herbed goat cheese soft enough to mold
- 4 oz prosciutto (or really thinly sliced salami)
- 3 sticks string cheese cut lengthwise in half
- 5 long strips roasted red peppers
- 3 pitted green olives cut in half
Instructions
- Mash together the cream cheese & goat cheese in a small bowl. Set aside.
- Trace a hand on wax paper. Then place another sheet of paper on top (you can see the tracing through it), tacking both down with something heavy on the sides. Using a small spatula or flat utensil, spread half the cheese mix inside your hand tracing.
- Lay down a strip of roasted red pepper along each finger, going into the hand, followed by a piece of halved string cheese. Fill in empty spaces on the hand with extra pieces of string cheese as necessary.
- Carefully spread remaining cheese on top of the hand, to completely cover the peppers and cheese sticks. Drape prosciutto over the hand and fingers, so all the cheese is covered. Tuck the prosciutto under the edges of hand and fingers.
- Push lightly into the tip of each finger to create divots for the fingernails. Then add one olive half to each divot.
- Put hand in refrigerator until ready to serve. Serve severed hand on a plate or platter with crackers and fruit.
Notes
-
- If able, take the soft cheeses out of the fridge 1 hour ahead of time. If your cheese is still too firm, microwave it in very small increments of time, like 10 seconds.
-
- Here's the opposite advice: keep prosciutto in the fridge right up until it's time to use it. Prosciutto is so thin and pliable that as it warms, it gets harder to handle.
-
- Find something heavy to hold down your wax paper so it doesn't slide around. I used some pumpkins we got at a pumpkin patch - functional & festive! 🎃
-
- Use a small spatula to help sculpt your hand. Run it along the tracing of the hand to help separate the fingers and set all the cheese in place.
-
- Presentation tip: tuck the prosciutto under the cheese a little so you have cleaner lines.
-
- Refrigerate your prosciutto hand for at least 10 minutes before serving. This helps firm up the cheese so it's a lot easier to transfer to an actual plate.
Nutrition
*Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet. While we are not certified nutritionists, we work with a Wordpress-integrated nutrition API to calculate our recipes' ingredient values.
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