Your Easter charcuterie board can be made with fruit and cheese—or Peeps and jelly beans!

How to Make a Cute Easter Charcuterie Board

Snack boards are the perfect addition to any gathering, Easter included! Most Easter charcuterie boards pull inspiration from crudités platters with fresh, seasonal produce or traditional charcuterie boards with sliced meats, cheeses and crackers.
For this board, though, our senior food stylist Shannon Norris wanted to make a candy-filled spread reminiscent of an Easter basket, complete with Easter grass, jelly beans and even a chocolate bunny.
Whether or not you serve this board alongside other Easter sweets, we’re sure that kids and adults will find themselves perusing the springy assortment all day long. Here are our best Easter charcuterie board ideas, straight from the Taste of Home Test Kitchen.
What to Put on an Easter Charcuterie Board
Bunny-shaped items
It was only natural to use a chocolate bunny as one of the focal centerpieces for our Easter candy board. We also worked in plenty of other bunny shapes by using store-bought items like Peeps and bunny-shaped graham crackers. If you have extra time and love a challenge, whip up homemade Peeps and make the iconic marshmallows from scratch.
Jelly beans
It’s not Easter without jelly beans! We included two kinds to make sure there would be enough to go around.
Chocolates
We used several kinds of chocolate to add color and seasonal shapes. Pink Hershey kisses and blue eggs add a shiny version of the pastel pinks and blues that we love around Easter. We also picked up some chocolates wrapped to look like carrots and a bag of spring-colored M&M’s, picking out the light blue candies (although you could opt for yellow, purple or green in their place).
Homemade treats
We made one homemade treat for this Easter board: pinwheel mints. We love these for their on-theme colors and the fun spiral on each one.
Easter candy
Using Easter grass bubble gum, we shaped a makeshift “bird’s nest” perfect for holding Whoppers robin eggs. Colorful white chocolate-covered almonds (we used the Favorite Day shimmer pastel almond blend at Target) add some crunch to the board.
How to Build an Easter Charcuterie Board
For our charcuterie board, we chose a tray with a lip and handles so we could easily fill it with Easter grass and not have to worry about any of the candy spilling off the sides.
Step 1: Fill the charcuterie board with Easter grass
We wanted our Easter “charcuterie” board to feel like an Easter basket, so we began by covering the entire bottom of the board with Easter grass.
Step 2: Make the nest and place the chocolate bunny
After you’ve nestled the Easter grass evenly, create a makeshift “nest” of the Easter grass bubble gum. We placed it in the middle of the board, off to the left.
We also placed the chocolate bunny in the middle but closer to the right side of the board. Placing these two unique items that draw your focus on the same latitude keeps the board feeling balanced.
Step 3: Grab the cookie cutters
It’s time to pull out your Easter baking gear! Use cookie cutters to hold candies that would normally need a bowl, like M&M’s and jelly beans.
We grabbed cookie cutters shaped like a bunny and a chick, but carrots, eggs or sheep would be great, too. Put them almost in the center of the board, above and below the chocolate bunny. It’s nice to have them tilted instead of perfectly straight because aesthetically, it looks nicer—and that way, you don’t have to worry about perfect proportions or orientation for the other candy groupings on the board.
Step 4: Place your Peeps and pinwheel mints
Arrange two rows of four bunny-shaped Peeps in the upper left-hand corner of the board.
In the bottom left-hand corner, arrange a row of chick-shaped Peeps. Just above the row of chicks, lay out two rows of the pinwheel mints. The Peeps and the mints should be just touching the chick-shaped cookie cutter.
On the right side of the board, starting at the upper corner, make two long lines of pinwheel mints nestling up against the right side of the chocolate bunny.
Step 5: Fill in the edges of the board
Below the chick-shaped cookie cutter, place a few blue chocolate eggs. In the bottom right-hand corner, nestle some jelly beans between the eggs and the pinwheel mints.
Between the nest and the bunny-shaped Peeps, pour in a handful of bunny-shaped graham crackers. Between the Peeps and the pinwheel mints, fill in some colorful chocolate-covered almonds.
Step 6: Fill in the gaps
After you have a border going around the outside of the board, you should have some empty space surrounding the chocolate bunny. Tuck in some carrot-looking chocolates and the pink Hershey kisses.
Step 7: Put the finishing touches on the Easter board
Place the Whoppers eggs on top of the bubble gum to make the nest look like it’s full of eggs. Then, fill in the cookie cutters with jelly beans and the blue M&M’s.
Step 8: Set the table
To make this Easter charcuterie board fit into a spread of other Easter-themed treats, nestle it on top of some more Easter grass, tucking some plastic eggs, extra jelly beans, M&M’s and other Easter candies around the edges.
Your crew won’t be able to resist grazing all day long—although it may be hard to convince them to get started simply because the board is so pretty!
Easter Charcuterie Board Tips
What can you serve with an Easter charcuterie board?
This board would be the perfect addition to your table full of Easter desserts, although this recipe is eye-catching enough that it could star as the main sweet. Otherwise, pair it with less chocolaty desserts like carrot cake, cupcake Easter baskets and berry tartlets to avoid overloading guests with only chocolate and candy options.
When it comes to Easter drinks, consider cottontail margaritas and bunny Marys (our springtime take on Bloody Marys). If you want to surprise your guests, make chocolate bunny cocktails: Cut off the ears of a chocolate bunny, pour in a creamy cocktail and serve with a colorful straw.
When can you serve this Easter charcuterie board?
While this board contains items traditionally considered dessert, we think that Easter is an occasion where it’s acceptable to snack on jelly beans and chocolate all the way up until the Easter ham is ready. Therefore, assemble and serve right when guests arrive, or save it for later after everyone is done with the main meal if you don’t want the kids to load up on candy right away.
Can you make this Easter charcuterie board ahead of time?
Because this sweet spread doesn’t have traditional charcuterie items like meat and cheese, you don’t have to worry as much as usual about food safety since most candy and chocolates can sit out at room temperature all day. The only items we’d think about tucking away after a little while are the pinwheel mints, since they’re made with cream cheese and the Peeps, since they’ll get hard and stale (which would be a true Easter tragedy).
Other Easter Charcuterie Board Ideas
If you’re interested in riffing to make your own Easter charcuterie board, we have more ideas for festive spreads.
- Traditional charcuterie board: Our guide to how to make a charcuterie board gives you all the tips and tricks you’ll need to arrange meats, cheeses, crackers and fruits. Keep it springy by using seasonal spring produce like asparagus and radishes. A crudités platter can provide some visual inspiration.
- Easter dessert board: Our board includes mostly Easter candy, but your board could include Easter desserts such as decorated Easter cookies, Easter cupcakes and Easter chocolates that would be just as sweet. Pastel-colored Easter bunny bark is another easy homemade element we’d suggest.
- Bunny-shaped board: Use a few wheels of cheese to craft a bunny shape, and arrange fruit, cheese, meat and crackers around it. Or, use a bunny-shaped cookie cutter to cut the center out of a wheel of cheese, filling the gap with a homemade jam or jelly of your choice.