Creepy Crawly Fruit Tray Recipe

Our Halloweenifying hootenanny moves from holidays to seasons this week with Spooky Spring! And today we’ve got a snack tray and dip combo for Scary Easy Snack Sunday that pays homage to an oft-feared critter…

Fruit Tray Ingredients

• Assorted fruits of your choosing
  • Pineapple
  • Kiwi
  • Grapes

Fruit Dip Ingredients

• 8 oz cream cheese
• 7 oz marshmallow fluff
• Blueberry sauce for drizzle

Blueberry Sauce Ingredients

• 1 cup blueberries
• ½ cup sugar
• Lemon juice

Additional Tools

• Fine mesh strainer with metal bowl
• Stand mixer with whisk attachment
• Spider cookie cutter
• Zip top bag or piping bag (if desired)

Instructions

1. Before assembling your Creepy Crawly Fruit Tray, you’ll want to make sure the fruit dip and its components are ready to go since cutting the fruit doesn’t take much time.
2. Start by preparing the blueberry sauce. In a small or medium saucepan, combine the blueberries, sugar, and lemon juice. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring regularly until all of the blueberries have burst. Lower the heat and simmer for 5 to 8 minutes. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature so that the sauce will thicken.
   • The blueberry sauce should thicken up as it cools. If it’s still too thin, you can dissolve equal parts cornstarch and warm water and whisk into the sauce to thicken it a bit more.
3. Next, mix together the fruit dip. In the bowl of a stand mixer with the whisk attachment, add the softened cream cheese and the marshmallow fluff. Whisk on medium speed until smooth. Transfer to a bowl or an airtight container and refrigerate until ready to serve.
4. To make the fruit tray, all you really need to do is cut your selected fruits in thick slices and then cut out your chosen shapes with various spider or Halloween-themed cookie cutters. Denser fruits, like melons and pineapples, tend to work best with these, though don’t shy away from including your personal favorites just because they may not work as well with the cookie cutters – you still want to eat them, after all!
5. When ready to assemble, place the bowl with the fruit dip on the tray. Arrange the assorted fruits around the bowl as you see fit – don’t forget to save and use the pineapple crown to add some height! Then serve your Creepy Crawly Fruit Tray and enjoy!

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Arachnophobes take warning: We’re talking spiders today! But did you know there’s an entire week dedicated to showing kindness to these oft-misunderstood, eight-legged cuties in the spring? Yup, Be Kind to Spiders Week is observed annually during the first full week of April, and no one shines a spotlight on this homage to arachnids like our ghoul Chelsea from Cheers! With Chelsea!

Meant as an opportunity to intentionally show kindness to spiders, Be Kind to Spiders Week highlights the good that these arachnids do, including agricultural benefits, pest control, and even possible medicinal uses for their venom. To celebrate on her site, Chelsea shares a weeklong series of spider-centric posts, including where her passion for the week comes from, spider documentaries for the whole family, and a spider-themed cocktail, of course!

So when it came time to think of a Scary Easy Snack for Spooky Spring, we knew we wanted to share some love for our eight-legged friends. And as recipes go, this one might just be the easiest we’ve ever shared! For the fruit itself, all you really need to do is cut it in slices and then use spider or other creepy crawly cookie cutters to finalize the shape. Like we said in the recipe, melons and denser fruits tend to work better with this technique since they’re larger and hold their shapes better, though they may not always be everyone’s preferred fruit. In that case, we definitely say to go with whatever you like best. Even if you only end up using one variety of fruit that works with the cookie cutter, the effect is still there!

Since the fruit itself is so simple, we decided this was the perfect opportunity to include a fruit dip recipe for the tray, as well! Again, we’re really playing into the ‘easy’ part of Scary Easy Snack Sunday here, as the dip itself only really requires two ingredients: cream cheese and marshmallow fluff, which by themselves make for a mighty tasty dip. But if you want to go the extra mile, we definitely encourage you to try your hand at a sauce or jam to go on top – with bonus points if it’s piped as a spiderweb! The finished dip has a bit of the tang from the cream cheese with plenty of sweetness from the marshmallow fluff that makes it pair exceptionally well with almost every kind of fruit.

And while Be Kind to Spiders Week may only come around in the spring, you can celebrate our eight-legged friends all year long like our ghoul Chelsea with your favorite fruit and the right cookie cutter! Certain fruits definitely lend themselves better to the idea, but you can use pretty much anything that’s in season to build a fruit tray that’s just to your liking. And with a dip that’s as tasty as it is simple to make, you may just find yourself returning to this recipe again and again. Bone appétit!