Here’s How to Make a Fun & Festive Halloween Snack Board

For many years, we tried our hardest to get our kids to sit down to a bowl of chili or slow cooker soup between painting their faces and finding someone’s wand, but the excitement was distracting and they almost never ate. Thus, our Halloween snack board tradition was born. We use a combination of store-bought and homemade staples, adding in festive and fun treats alongside veggies, fruit, and more filling snacks. Here’s how you can build your very own snack board for Halloween dinner.

Read more: 10 Ways to Build a Snack Board with Stuff Already in Your Kitchen

Your snack board should be a good mix of easy homemade recipes, store-bought staples, and special treats. Be sure to include two or three more substantial snacks (like the mummy pigs in a blanket or English muffin pizzas) to ensure everyone fills their bellies ahead of all the candy.

Here are some of our favorite snack-board goodies.

• Easy homemade snacks: Mummy pigs in a blanket, English muffin pizzas (made with either pizza sauce or pesto), deviled eggs with snipped chives (to resemble pumpkins!), and puff pastry bats (use a bat cookie cutter instead of a star).
• Store-bought snacks: Guacamole or hummus (just add candy eyes or olives), cheese sticks, celery sticks, carrot sticks, grapes, apple slices, clementines (stick a small piece of celery on top so that these look like pumpkins, too!) roasted pumpkin seeds, and seasonal chips — like those cute ghost and bat shapes you can only find in October.
• Special treats: Candy corn, ghoulish pretzels, boo bark, pumpkin patch brownies.

You can make the dipped pretzels, puff pastry bats, deviled eggs, and baked goods like brownies the evening before. On Halloween, bake the pigs in a blanket first, then turn on the broiler for the ghost pizzas. While these bake, chop veggies and slice fruit.

When it comes to building the snack board, you can use a rimmed baking sheet, large cutting board, large cheese board, or a large platter. I actually use our pizza steel for Halloween boards because its black color fits the mood and it’s bigger than a serving tray. Start your board by placing dip bowls on first, then add your larger snacks, followed by vegetables and fruit. Just before serving, add your dip to the empty bowls, and pop in a spoon for serving. At this point the board will be pretty full, so fill in any gaps with any special treats.