How to Create a Stunning Charcuterie Platter Guests Will Love

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The holiday season is underway and I couldn’t be more excited! With Thanksgiving, Friendsgiving, spending time with friends, and all of the fun entertaining that comes with this time of year, I wanted to share how to create a beautiful charcuterie platter for fall.

This fall charcuterie platter is colorful, easy to assemble, and tastes delicious!

Did I mention that you can buy everything for this charcuterie platter from the store without making anything homemade? You’re welcome.

To make our charcuterie platter even better, we drank the new limited edition Coca-Cola® Cinnamon & Sprite® Winter Spiced Cranberry drinks from Walmart. They pair nicely with all of the savory food on our charcuterie platter and we love the new seasonal flavors so much!

How to Create a Stunning Charcuterie Platter

Selecting Ingredients

When creating a charcuterie platter, you want to make sure to include a wide variety of ingredientsin a wide variety of colors and textures. Variety is the name of the game!

Be sure to pick up some different meat, cheese, baguettes, crackers, dips or spread, seeds, nuts, fruit, and even small pumpkins and gourds. Keep reading to see how we creatively used those mini pumpkins.

Prepping the Food

Before the platter gets put together, all of the food will need to be prepped.

Slice the baguette, salami, and cheese (if necessary), wash the fruit, and cut anything else that needs to be cut. This will make it really easy to create the charcuterie platter right before serving time.

If you are making this charcuterie platter for Thanksgiving, Friendsgiving, or any other fall occasion, I’ve got the perfect hack for you!

Use small pumpkins as the perfect little dip and spread holders. They look so festive and colorful and are a cinch to make!

Start by cutting off the top 1/3 of the pumpkin horizontally, then scooping out the seeds and pulp with a spoon so the inside is nice and smooth.

Next just fill the pumpkins up with your selected dips. I served a spicy hummus and an artichoke jalapeno dip, and topped the spicy hummus with pumpkin seeds.

Assembling the Charcuterie Platter

Now comes the fun part- arranging of the delicious food into a gorgeous charcuterie board. There really is no right or wrong way to do this, but here’s a few tips for making your board look its’ very best:

Start with the bigger items first, so they are evenly spaced out. My two dip-filled pumpkins went down first, followed by the baguettes and a big piece of cheese.

Since those first larger items were somewhat bland colorwise, I added some of the more colorful food next to them to up the color and make the charcuterie platter more pleasing ot look at. Black grapes, kiwi berries, pumpkin seeds, fresh pomegranites off my tree, and a cut apple all add to the visual appeal of the charcuterie tray.

Next came more of the big items, like the salami, prosciutto, red apples, and white roasted pumpkin seeds.

Now it was time to fill in all the gaps and empty spaces. I used more of the same ingredients in different places and added dried apricots, crackers, more cheese, and mini peppers. My favorite part of the board are all the colorful, unique gourds. Don’t you just love those wonderful colors and textures?

And now this lovely charcuterie platter is ready to serve! Don’t forget to pick up some tasty cans of Coca-Cola® Cinnamon & Sprite® Winter Spiced Cranberry. They go perfectly with this yummy platter of goodness.

Hover over the photo below to click through and these yummy drinks before they’re gone!