Breakfast Charcuterie Board (Easy Brunch Idea)
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A breakfast charcuterie board is the ultimate holiday brunch option! Feed your family or guests a variety of foods with a beautiful display that is easy to create. A brunch board can be created to suit your own tastes featuring either homemade or purchased items. Add in your favorite muffins, yogurt, pastries, hard boiled eggs and fresh fruit that will have guests coming back for seconds!
What is a Charcuterie Board?
Charcuterie is a french word which translates to “pork-butcher-shop”. Traditional charcuterie boards are filled with cured meats and cheeses but as its popularity has grown, the definition is more broad and goes beyond meat and cheese boards. Any board, typically wooden, filled with food displayed artfully with various textures and colors can be labeled a charcuterie board. They can be large for feeding a crowd, or a small charcuterie board for two.
Charcuterie boards can have various themes centered around a specific occasion such as a birthday party, menu choice like a baked potato dinner board, or any holiday under the sun. They are an ideal holiday appetizer because they work so well for entertaining. Holiday themed ideas can vary from a Christmas Tree Charcuterie Board featuring meats and cheeses to a Halloween Charcuterie Board loaded with your favorite candies and sweet treats. The possibilities are endless and coming up with a theme is half the fun! Because of the items I chose, this makes a great patriotic charcuterie board for the 4th of July, Memorial Day or Labor Day breakfast!
What to Put on a Brunch Charcuterie Board
There are so many options for creating a breakfast board for special occasions like baby showers or Christmas morning. Offering hot breakfast foods is more challenging since the window for serving is much shorter. I wanted to create a charcuterie brunch board that would allow guests to graze, so I opted for a continental style breakfast with all room temperature or cold items. That meant plenty of pastries and fruit but I also included condiments in small bowls and protein sources like eggs and yogurt. You can also do a mixture of hot and cold if preferred of your breakfast favorites.
- Pastries and Baked Goods: These can be homemade or purchased. I used a breakfast variety tray from my local warehouse club along and mini donuts from the grocery store. But muffins, biscuits, quick bread, coffee cake, scones, mini cinnamon rolls, toasted bread, english muffins or bagels would all be great options!
- Protein: Hard-boiled eggs and Greek yogurt are both good protein sources that can be served cold. Other savory options include smoked salmon , cream cheese, sliced ham, cheese and nut butters. I use these instructions for steaming eggs.
- Condiments: I made some honey butter and included homemade apple butter for my breakfast board. Peanut butter, jam or jelly, nutella, syrup and honey also work well, depending upon what else is offered. Purchase your favorites or surprise with unique homemade options pineapple jam or even persimmon jam!
- Fruit and Vegetables: Fresh produce adds a lot of color and serves as easy filler on a breakfast board and adds pops of color. Some wonderful choices includes fresh berries, grapes, orange slices, cherry tomatoes, red onion and green onion . Consider including a fruit dip for your favorite fresh fruits! You can also add in fresh herbs or edible flowers for garnish throughout.
- American Breakfast: Hot food items can be served including breakfast sausage links, crispy bacon, Canadian bacon, heart mini waffles, fluffy pancakes, french toast or scrambled eggs. I recommend placing hot foods in their own small serving dishes so you can build the board ahead of time and quickly add them to your breakfast platter before serving.
Yogurt Parfaits
Yogurt is a great choice for any breakfast charcuterie board. In fact, an entire board dedicated to a variety of yogurts and yogurt toppings like fresh fruit and granola, is a great way to keep things simple! I like making it easy for guests to easily grab and go so I chose to make Greek Yogurt Parfaits for this grazing board.
These yogurt parfaits were made with small plastic cups filled with a honey vanilla Greek yogurt and topped with fresh blueberries and raspberries. I used 5.5 oz snack cups. You can make these even heartier with some granola layered in, sprinkled on top or offered in a bowl on the brunch charcuterie board. Mini spoons from my local dollar store were placed into the parfait to make serving very simple.
How to Make Honey Butter
To make honey butter, simply take a stick of butter (1/2 cup) at room temperature and stir in 3 tablespoons honey until it is well combined.
Add to a small dish and drizzle with additional honey. It tastes amazing on toasted bread, bagels and baked goods. Honey butter on charcuterie boards makes for a great condiment. Some honey recipes include other ingredients like confectioner’s sugar or salt but I prefer the simplicity of just butter and honey.
How to Make a Breakfast Charcuterie Board
To build a breakfast charcuterie platter, start by placing your larger items and items in serving dishes as anchors on your board. Keep in mind this does not need to be symmetrical. You can set your board up however you like, and it is actually a lot easier if you don’t try to make everything line up perfectly.
For my board, I started with my mini yogurt parfaits and individual crumb cakes. I then added in a bowl of hard boiled eggs and my condiment dishes including honey butter and apple butter.
I continued by adding in my mini muffins, mini apple fritters, mini donuts and mini streudels, placing them in groups throughout the board.
Now it is time to fill in with even smaller items. I added in bunches of grapes and filled in smaller spaces with my fresh fruit. This included blueberries, raspberries and strawberries, some of which I halved for more visual appeal. The fresh fruit adds so much color and dimension to the board, while still adding function. What brunch would be complete without fruit?
This breakfast fan just loves this easy charcuterie board! It features some of my favorite breakfast foods while being an easy to way to get in that most important meal of the day, even during the holiday season!
What Kind of Charcuterie Board to Use?
This breakfast charcuterie idea is very flexible and you can use any large wood board you already have on hand. This could be an extra large cutting board, pizza board or a large round board with sides to create epic charcuterie boards!
A wood charcuterie board that is 22 inches round is what is featured in this post. It was purchased several years ago at T.J. Maxx so I can’t find the exact one I’ve used here. A large rectangle or square would work just as well. Here are some great round charcuterie board options from Amazon:
Breakfast Charcuterie Board
Ingredients
- hard boiled eggs
- yogurt
- fresh fruit such as strawberries raspberries, blueberries and grapes
- muffins mini donuts, scones, or other pastries
- bread biscuits and/or bagels
- apple butter jam and/or jelly
- peanut butter or other nut butters
- honey butter or regular butter
Honey Butter:
- 1/2 cup butter (one stick) room temperature
- 3 tablespoons honey
Instructions
Yogurt Parfaits:
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Add Greek Yogurt (or your favorite yogurt) to small cups. ). Top with fresh berries and/or granola. Insert mini spoon for easier serving.
Honey Butter:
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Stir together softened butter and honey until well combined. Add to a small serving dish and drizzle with additional honey, if desired.
Build a Breakfast Charcuterie Board
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Make your favorite baked goods in advance, unless using purchased items.
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Prepare hard boiled eggs and place in a serving dish.
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Wash fruit and cut if needed.
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Transfer any condiments such as jam into small dishes.
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On a large board, arrange your items . Start by adding items in serving dishes, larger baked goods and yogurt parfaits. Place them randomly throughout your board, with space in between.
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Add in additional breakfast items. Line some foods while stacking others for more visual interest.
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Fill in remaining empty spaces with fresh fruit.
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Serve immediately. Store any leftover baked goods in an airtight container and any remaining items in the refrigerator.
Recipe Notes
Make this breakfast board with your favorite breakfast items! If serving hot foods, I recommend placing them in serving dishes so it is easy to build the charcuterie board and add the hot items last minute.
This charcuterie brunch board was a huge hit with my family! This is a great Easter breakfast or Christmas Brunch idea and is sure to be a crowd favorite. What would be your must-have items?
More Breakfast Charcuterie Ideas
Looking for some breakfast charcuterie recipes? Here are some awesome recipes to consider when designing your brunch board!
- Mini Pancakes: While traditional sized pancakes can be used, mini pancakes make it easier to eat and display!
- Banana Muffins: These are the absolute best banana crumb muffins and can easily be made in a mini muffin pan if preferred.
- Air Fryer Donut Holes: Semi-homemade using refrigerated biscuits, these cinnamon and sugar donuts are amazing!! Trust me.
- Individual Baked Hash Browns: These make ahead hash browns are prepared in a muffin tin and easy to serve!
- Sausage Breakfast Casserole: An amazing breakfast casserole to serve on the side for a heartier option!
- Salmon Lox: Add all the fixings to make delicious and protein-packed lox and guests will thank you!
More Breakfast Recipes