How to Make a Brunch Board — Nothing says relaxation and pampering like a breakfast or brunch charcuterie board that’s loaded with everyone’s morning favorites! Whether you include eggs, meats, cheeses, fresh fruits, or all the craveworthy carbs, it’s sure to be a hit!
PERFECT for weekend brunches or special holiday mornings like Easter, Mother’s Day, Christmas, or New Year’s! Use ready-made foods from your bakery or grocery store so all that remains is FAST and EASY assembly!
What Is a Breakfast or Brunch Board?
This is my dream come true when it comes to breakfast and brunch! If I woke up to this, it would totally make my day and I think most people would feel the same way.
My brunch and breakfast board is similar to a charcuterie board, but it’s filled with “morning foods” rather than “cocktail hour foods.”
Even though it looks a little daunting and time consuming, I promise it’s not.
I am a big fan of using prepared, packaged, convenience, and deli-made foods as much as possible to reduce the work for you and make this fast and easy! More tips on that below.
Because let’s face it, the concept of brunch is all about easy-breezy, grazing, relaxing, not stressing, and definitely not trying too hard while savoring a variety of delicious foods.
Ingredient Ideas for a Brunch Charcuterie Board
Needless to say, whatever your heart desires on your brunch board, feel free to set it out. For this breakfast and brunch charcuterie board, I used the following very flexible ingredients:
- Meats — sausage links or patties, sliced deli or homemade ham, bacon, smoked sausage, lox, prosciutto, sliced turkey
- Cheeses — cubed, slices, or wedges including cheddar, pepper jack, smoked gouda, and cheese spreads. Also consider brie, American, goat cheese, Manchego, Swiss, or other favorite cheeses
- Eggs — Hard or soft-boiled, scrambled, fried. Consider egg muffins, fritattas, and quiche
- Bread — biscuits (canned or frozen or even homemade), bagels, croissants, waffles, pancakes, scones, white bread, whole wheat bread, rolls, Hawaiian bread
- Sweet Breads — donuts, cinnamon rolls, donut holes, mini muffins, or your favorite sweet carby treats
- Potatoes — hash browns, tater tots, and consider potato casseroles
- Gravy — classic gravy or with sausage
- Cream cheese — regular or flavored
- Condiments — jellies, jams, syrup, Nutella, peanut butter, butter or margarine
- Beverages — coffee, milk, creamers, water, smoothies, orange juice or other juices, champagne or mimosas
- Fruit — berries such as strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries; apple slices, orange segments, melons, bananas. Also consider pineapple, mango, kiwi, grapes and more
- Vegetables — sliced or cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, red or white onions, pickles or relish
- Other sides — yogurt, granola, cereals, oatmeal
- Serving platters — wooden cutting boards, metal trays, small serving bowls, ramekins, plates, silverware
Tip: Make sure to read the Ideas and Suggestions for a Themed Brunch Board provided below. Tons of easy recipe ideas even without the board concept!
How to Assemble a Brunch Board
There aren’t really any rules when it comes to assembling a brunch charcuterie board. However, this is what I suggest for your breakfast board assembly:
Step 1: Choose what you’re putting on the board, and reheat it or cook it, as needed.
Step 2: Select your board, serving bowls, plates, utensils, and so forth.
Step 3: Fill small bowls with things like jams, gravy, or anything you don’t want spilled onto other items.
Step 4: For the main items like the meats or eggs or potatoes, you can plate them or simply lay them on the board.
Step 5: Place a few main bowls around the main food items.
Step 6: Now place a smaller bowl or bowls around the main bowls and remember to layer by raising up the smaller bowls in stacks or placing them on a glass.
Step 7: Fill in open spaces with bread, cheeses, fruits, muffins, sweets, or whatever you are exactly using.
Step 8: Add serving spoons to anything that needs it and set out plates for guests to use.
Ideas and Suggestions for a Themed Breakfast and Brunch Board
The sky is truly the limit when it comes to creating themes for a brunch board. For example, you can create a brunch board with the focus on:
- Pancake Board — Mini Buttermilk Pancakes, Pumpkin Pancakes, or Apple Cinnamon Pancakes are all great.
- Muffins Board — From Strawberry Chocolate Chip Muffins, to Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip, to full size Zucchini Muffins to Skinny Blueberry Muffins, and Flourless Blender Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip.
- Waffles Board — From Hash Brown Waffles to Classic Waffles with Berries or Pumpkin Waffles and everything in between.
- Eggs All Ways Board — Although this will require more prep and planning, from a Bacon and Cheese Egg Casserole, to Fancy White Cheddar Baked Eggs in Ramekins, an Easy Frittata, a Cheesy Quiche, Skinny 100-Calorie Egg Muffins, or beloved Egg-In-A-Hole Avocado Toast, Eggs In Hell with Italian Sausage, and more. Nothing screams brunch quite like eggs!
How to Make a Brunch Board Faster and Easier
While creating a charcuterie brunch board can — or could become — a fair amount of work, don’t be afraid to buy frozen products that you can simply reheat, already prepared refrigerated products, or whatever convenience products will make it faster and easier for you!
By shopping smart at your grocery store, you can pick up the following and concentrate on assembly so the true workload of this board becomes extremely minimal:
- buy fresh donuts
- snag some fresh muffins
- grab some fresh fruit and berries
- add couple packages or two of thinly sliced meats
- get a couple types of sliced cheese or blocks of cheese
- hard-boil a dozen eggs the night before
- set out some bread to toast or frozen toaster waffles like Eggo
- make coffee and serve it with great flavored creamers
- set out juice or mimosas and you’re done!
Can I Make a Vegetarian or Gluten-Free Brunch Board?
Yes, absolutely! I personally don’t ever start the day with meats, or really anything too heavy.
Eggs with a slice of cheese, fresh fruit, water, and coffee are perfect for me. Totally vegetarian and gluten-free.
Can I Prep the Brunch Board in Advance?
Parts of it, yes! And if you buy pre-made items from the grocery store, the bulk of the work will already be done for you.
However, if you’re totally DIYing the brunch board, I recommend hard-boiling any eggs in advance, as well as baking any muffins, slicing the fruit, and so on.
Waffles and pancakes can even be made in advance and reheated in the oven or toaster oven the morning of.
Serving Ideas for a Breakfast or Brunch Board
A brunch board is great to make on a special holiday morning like Christmas, New Year’s, Easter, or Mother’s Day. Another loving touch would be to assemble and and take one to a new mother, an aging loved one, or someone who is sick or fell ill.
Food gifts from the heart always go a long way to perking someone up!
- When serving your brunch board, remember there are lots of finger foods so have plenty of napkins.
- Also, people may end up using more than one plate.
- I find it easiest to set out cake-sized dessert plates and that way people can fill up a couple different times. Many times they will just take a clean (second) plate.
- Use paper plates to keep it easier for you if you’d like.
Tips for the Best Brunch Board
In my opinion, a great brunch board or breakfast grazing board will be very full with a variety of foods.
You want everyone to feel there is plenty for all to graze and to have a wide array of foods to choose from.
For example, some people are anti-carbs and all about protein and others are the opposite. Some people want to be gluten-free and vegetarian whereas others are meat, potatoes, with sweet treats all the way.
Layering food or bowls as you build your board is great because this will help you pack more food onto the board without it being too overlapped.
For example, by adding mini bowls on the board and placing another bowl on top effectively helps you layer your various components.
I suggest staging your drinks and beverages including coffee, creamers, milk, juices, mimosas, and so forth near your board but not on top of it.
However, because people will be standing around it grazing, keep a bit of distance between the area of the beverages and the food so you don’t create and human traffic jams with everyone in the same place at once.
Don’t forget water! It’s normal to wake up a little dehydrated so don’t forget to set out water and an ice bucket too.
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How To Make a Brunch Board
Ingredients
- Meats - sausage links or patties, sliced deli or homemade ham, bacon, smoked sausage, lox, prosciutto, sliced turkey
- Cheese - cubed, slices, or wedges including cheddar, pepper jack, smoked gouda, and cheese spreads. Also consider brie, American, goat cheese, Manchego, Swiss, or other favorite cheeses
- Eggs - Hard or soft-boiled, scrambled, fried. Consider egg muffins, fritattas, and quiche
- Bread - biscuits, canned or frozen or even homemade, bagels, croissants, waffles, pancakes, scones
- Sweet Breads - donuts, cinnamon rolls, donut holes, mini muffins, or your favorite sweet carby treats
- Bread - White, whole wheat, rolls, Hawaiian bread
- Potatoes - hashbrowns, tator tots, and consider potato casseroles
- Gravy - classic gravy or with sausage
- Cream cheese - regular or flavored
- Condiments - jellies, jams, syrup, Nutella, peanut butter, butter or margarine
- Beverages - coffee, milk, creamers, water, orange juice or other juices, champagne or mimosas
- Fruit - all berries such as strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries; apple slices, orange segments, melons, bananas. Also consider pineapple, mango, kiwi, grapes and more
- Vegetables - sliced or cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, red or white onions, pickles or relish
- Other - yogurt, granola, cereals
- Serving platters - wooden cutting boards, metal trays, small serving bowls, ramekins, plates, silverware
Instructions
- Choose what you’re putting on the board, and reheat it or cook it, as needed.
- Select your board, various sizes of serving bowls, plates, utensils, and whatever props or items you will need for assembly.
- Fill smaller bowls with things like jams, gravy, or anything you don’t want spilled onto other items.
- For more main items like the meats or eggs, you can plate them or simply lay them on the board.
- Place a few main bowls around the main food items and add to them what you think will fit best in them from potatoes to muffins, whatever looks best.
- Place smaller bowls around the main bowls. Tip - Layer by raising up the smaller bowls in stacks or placing them on a glass to raise them which allows you to pack more food onto the board without it looking too crammed in or overcrowded.
- Fill in open spaces with bread, cheeses, fruits, muffins, sweets, or whatever you are exactly using and what will nicely fill in the gaps.
- Add serving spoons to anything that needs it and set out plates, cutlery, and napkins for guests to use.* (See Notes for some themed board suggestions, ideas, and recipe link inspiration.)
Notes
Themed board ideas:
Pancake Board with various types of pancakes – Mini Buttermilk Pancakes, Pumpkin Pancakes, or Apple Cinnamon Pancakes are all great.- Muffin board with all the muffins – From Strawberry Chocolate Chip Muffins, to Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip, to full size Zucchini Muffins to Skinny Blueberry Muffins, and Flourless Blender Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip.
- Waffle Board – From Hash Brown Waffles to Classic Waffles with Berries or Pumpkin Waffles and everything in between.
- Eggs All Ways Board – Although this will require more prep and planning, from a Bacon and Cheese Egg Casserole, to Fancy White Cheddar Baked Eggs in Ramekins, an Easy Frittata, a Cheesy Quiche, Skinny 100-Calorie Egg Muffins, or beloved Egg-In-A-Hole Avocado Toast, Eggs In Hell with Italian Sausage, and more – nothing screams brunch quite like eggs!
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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