Looking for a fun activity for your kiddos to either help make or eat? This St. Patrick's Day charcuterie board is so much fun to put together! Everything you see is naturally gluten free and 100% delicious. This board has it all.... from a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, to a pepper shamrock, to chips and guacamole! It includes a luscious fruit dip as well as a green ranch vegetable dip. The best part about charcuterie boards is that you get to personalize them how you like!
St. Patrick's Day Charcuterie Board
Serves 4-6
Purple (red) grapes
Blueberries
Green grapes
1 yellow pepper
Baby Carrots
Raspberries
Cucumber
3 kiwi fruit
Baby dill pickles
1 green pepper
Tortilla chips
Rolo chocolate candy
For Guacamole:
1 large ripe avocado
2 teaspoons lime juice
1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
Kosher salt to taste
For Fruit Dip:
4 oz. cream cheese, softened
4 oz. marshmallow fluff
2 teaspoons orange juice
For Green Ranch Veggie Dip:
1 cup favorite ranch dip (see my favorite recipe here)
3 fresh chives
7 fresh parsley leaves
Step-by-step tutorial:
I start out by making the dips. For the green ranch vegetable dip, mix up your favorite ranch dip recipe. Mine is this one that I think is THE BEST. To that, add about a handful of your favorite fresh GREEN herbs. I love to use fresh chives and parsley, or cilantro. Blend them together so the greens leave the ranch with a beautiful green color, and the dip has a very fresh flavor!
This dip is also good for a salad dressing. So yummy!
For the fruit dip, you will need 1/2 block of cream cheese (4 oz.) and about half of an 8 oz. container of Marshmallow Fluff. Cream these two together, beating until smooth. Add about 2 teaspoons orange juice and continue beating until light and fluffy.
It's like eating a cloud with your fruit. My absolute favorite thing to dip in this is apples and oranges.
Next is the guacamole. We love fresh guacamole. Do you know what the secret is? Just right avocados! It's not always easy to get the perfect avocado, but I try to buy them fairly green at the supermarket, then leave them out in a bowl with some fruit to ripen on the counter. In about 3-4 days they are usually perfect. You want them to be pretty dark and starting to be squishy. We keep guacamole simple and just add lime juice, minced garlic, and salt. Sometimes I love to add some red onion and cilantro, but my kids don't love it as much. This was a board for the kiddos..... so lime juice, garlic, and salt it is!!
To make this darling 4-leaf shamrock, slice the sides of a green pepper (I had a large pepper, so I only needed two sides and split those in half). Shape them with a knife to be how you want them to look. I used a thin slice of pepper for the stem. Besides the dips, this was the first thing I put on the board so I could fill in around it.
Next I build the rainbow. This part is super fun! You know the way to remember the order of colors of a rainbow, right? ROY G. BIV - this name gives you the starting letters of the colors in order....red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. To have my rainbow lead to a pot of gold, I put it on the bottom of the board near my cup holder where I placed the Rolo chocolate candies for the gold. It was easiest to start with the purple and build up from there. You can get creative and use any sort of fruit or vegetable for these colors! Orange segments or mango are good choices for orange. Strawberries or cherry tomatoes are great for the red. Pineapple or yellow kiwis are options for yellow. Green could be so many things! We have lots of green fruits and veggies. Blackberries are another good choice for blue or purple.
After the rainbow, you just start to fill in the spaces. I wanted to use mostly green foods for the rest, so I cut up 3 kiwi fruits (that I ripened with the avocados) as well as an English cucumber.
My kids love dill pickles, so that was an easy decision to place down the side.
Putting it all together is so satisfying. Food can really be beautiful, can't it?
I hope you feel inspired to try a board for St. Patrick's Day! It doesn't have to be anything fancy. You can just use a baking sheet or cutting board if you'd like. Charcuterie boards usually contain meats and cheese, and this one was just fruits and vegetables. Make it what you and your kiddos feel like eating! My kids were actually surprised to find out how many green foods they do love!
Recipe Source: Ideas came from Pinterest, and then I designed it myself