Easy Dessert Charcuterie Board (with store bought ingredients)

This easy dessert Charcuterie board is the perfect sweet treat for all of your get-togethers. It’s easy to assemble and there’s no baking involved, you’ll need only store-bought items.

It is a great addition to serve along a savory charcuterie board, or even after dinner instead of dessert. Super easy and also works as a beautiful centerpiece.

You can use a wooden board as big as you want, and arrange all of the sweet treats using my tips below.

What can I add to my dessert Charcuterie board?

There are endless possibilities for you to add to your board, and it’s precisely this that makes it really fun to make.

It’s totally customizable! you can use your favorite treats or whatever you find at the store. Use whatever you have at home or if you prefer making homemade treats, this is your chance!

Here are some ideas:

Spreads

These are the perfect addition for dipping your cookies, fruits or pretzels, plus they look pretty, adding a variety of textures to your board.

Use Chocolate hazelnut spread, Dulce de Leche, Caramel sauce or caramel dip, peanut butter, honey, chocolate ganache or any chocolate dip. Jams, Marshmallow dip or any homemade dessert dips of your choice.

Cookies

Cookies are an amazing way to add a variety of forms to your charcuterie board. Look for squares, circles or sticks to add visual interest!

Some ideas are Dutch Stroopwafels (Caramel filled waffle sandwiches), Oreo Cookies, butter cookies, chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies. Also, wafer sticks, ginger snaps (depending on the season), graham crackers, girl scout cookies, animal crackers, biscotti or waffer cookies

Treats

Here you’ll find all of those extras that won’t fit into your cookie category, but that are as important and that will introduce yummy baked goodies into your dessert board. You just need to walk through the bakery of any big grocery store to find store-bought treats.

Chocolate-covered pretzels, rice krispie treats, salted Popcorn, Caramel popcorn, mini cheesecakes, brownie bites, mini donuts, macarons, meringue cookies, pound cake slices, mini cupcakes, mini cinnamon rolls, pastries, mini pancakes.

Chocolate

Use a variety of chocolates to create diversity on your board. Look for white chocolate, dark chocolate and milk chocolate to add to your board. You’ll create not only interest, but you’ll give your guests a variety of flavors to try, for all tastes.

Chocolate truffles, chocolate bars, chocolate chips, chocolate covered nuts, chocolate covered coffee beans, chocolate covered dried fruit, ferrero rocher, kisses, dove chocolate or Ghirardelly chocolate squares are only a few examples.

Candy

These are found in any grocery store, and you can use seasonal candy. Think Valentines, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving or Christmas. By adding seasonal candy, your dessert platter becomes the perfect way to make a themed board.

Marshmallows, gummy bears, peanut butter cups, m&m’s, brittle, salted caramel candy, rolos, snickers mini, milky way mini, Candy canes (during Christmas season), bite sized twix, fudge or thin mints

Fresh fruit

You can use your favorite fruits or fruits of the season. Try adding the fruit both whole and cutting slices to create a variety of sizes and forms, as well as different colors.

Orange slices, apple slices, fresh berries (these are perfect to add a pop of color to your board!), grapes, figs, mango, cherries, pears, pomegranate, plums, pineapples or even banana slices

Dried fruit

I love the flavor combo of dried fruit and a chocolate dip or a chocolate bar. They are also a great way to add color and variety to your board.

You can use cranberries, freeze dried strawberries, freeze dried raspberries, dried apple slices, dry mango, dried apricots, banana chips, dried pineapple, dried cherries, dried raisins, dried figs or dry peaches

Nuts

Nuts are the perfect way to finish your board. The generally small size of nuts allows me to fill in all of the small gaps in a very easy way. You can also use candied nuts!

Pistachios, Peanuts, Walnuts, pecans, almonds, macadamia nuts, cashews or hazelnuts, among others.

Steps to make a simple dessert charcuterie board

These steps apply for every traditional charcuterie board or cheese board. After buying all of your ingredients, you can start placing your items from big to small, arranging them around the board.

Step 1

First, start by placing the bigger objects in a cutting board or wooden board. I started with my spreads, which I placed in small bowls in the center of my board. If using jams, make sure to place a small spoon for easy serving.

If you’re not using spreads or dips, you can also place something small like nuts, chocolate chips or cranberries in a small bowl and start from there.

Step 2

Second, I added the next biggest items in my ingredients’ list: the Dutch Stroopwafels, followed by the chocolate butter cookies. Arrange them around your spreads, and try to place them in an orderly manner.

You can see here that I used 2 cookies with 2 different shapes and colors, and some of them were placed with the cookie facing up. Variety and the change of color creates interest in your board.

Step 3

Third, were the circular, medium sized treats. You can place them to start filling the gaps around your spreads and in the corners of your board.

If they’re not flat like the cookies, and they’re circular or with a cubed form, you can pack them in small heaps around the board.

I repeated 3 to 4 heaps of each ingredient, but this will depend on how many ingredients you have. If you’re using fresh fruit, make sure to cut a few slices to break the pattern and create different sizes

Step 4

I then added the pretzel sticks, which I loved how these had a completely different shape from everything else.

I placed them in the thin and long spaces between the ingredients, filling the board even more.

Step 5

Following the pretzel sticks came the second to last smallest ingredients. Chocolate covered almonds, raspberries and apricots. Again, I placed them in the gaps, in small heaps in 2 or 3 different places.

Step 6

Lastly came the smallest of them all: the nuts. Use them to fill any gaps there are on your board. If possible, use more than 1 variety.

Tips for making an epic dessert charcuterie board

• Use a variety of colors to create an eye catching board. Place the desserts next to different colored objects. For example, don’t place all of your milk chocolate and dark chocolate together, but break that color pattern placing some fresh colorful fruit that will give that pop of color between them
• Equally important is adding seasonal, fresh produce. This gives a natural and fresh feeling to your board

• On the other hand, different shapes help create an interesting board. Try looking for different shapes of cookies or cutting part of your fruit with a few slices to break a shape pattern (take a look at the strawberries in my board!)
• Different textures help your board look diverse. The added sea salt in the pretzels or chocolates, the creaminess of the spreads or dips or the smoothness of chocolate will help you achieve this
• Place forks and dessert plates so your guests can easily grab all of the goodies on the board
• To sum up, diversity in shapes, flavors, colors and textures will make for an interesting and beautiful board

Charcuterie board ideas

There are many themed dessert charcuterie boards to make! here are a few ideas:

Valentine’s day theme:

Use seasonal candy, like pink, red and white m&m’s, or seasonal chocolate that comes in valentines themed wraps, like kisses or Dove chocolate.

Stick to reds, pinks, whites and hearts; add strawberries and raspberries, as well as white chocolate covered pretzels with pink and red sprinkles and red velvet cupcakes or cheesecakes.

Easter dessert Charcuterie board:

Chocolate eggs, easter candy, slices of carrot pound cake, bunny shaped cookies and chocolates are a few examples of what you can add to your board.

Halloween dessert board:

Orange, purple and black are the colors you should be aiming for.

Here you can add all of those spooky halloween candy like candy corn and halloween m&m’s, peanut butter cups, caramel popcorn and even peanut butter cookies found in the bakery aisle.

Thanksgiving Charcuterie board:

Browns, oranges and yellows should be the main colors of your board ingredients. Make a pumpkin dip, use dried fruit like apricots, candy corn and hand pies. Oranges or slices of blood orange, sliced apples as well as any other goodie found in the bakery department.

Christmas Charcuterie board:

A Christmas board can be filled with all types of chocolate and mini marshmallows, candy canes, pomegranate, store-bought white chocolate covered pretzels with crushed candy canes, homemade or store-bought peppermint bark and chocolate covered macadamia nuts.

Can I make my board ahead of time?

Sure! you can place the non-dairy spreads, candy, chocolate and cookies in your board, and cover it with a plastic wrap some hours before serving.

Right before serving, uncover and add the fresh fruit.

How do I store leftover items from my dessert board?

Cover and refrigerate all of your fresh produce, dairy and perishable goods. You can store at room temperature, wrapped and away from any heat sources the candy, chocolate and cookies.

Take a look at this video of my charcuterie board so you can see up close all of the amazing textures, colors and flavors I used!