This recipe by Taste of Home looked so effective and dramatic, I just had to put it through my test kitchen. Nothing says a Halloween party more than a tasty mini graveyard!
I only had one brick of softened cream cheese so that is what I went with and held back a little on the herbs and spices. What a bizarre mix: garlic powder, celery salt, basil… I added some smoked paprika and a head of roasted garlic for extra flavour, put everything in my mini food processor and blended away:
In no time I had a creamy and very strong but fabulous cream cheese spread! I put it in the fridge for the spread to harden and for the flavours to meld.
The recipe just says to shape the dip into a tombstone so what I did was cover my cutting board with parchment and delve into the cream cheese with a plastic wrap-covered hand. Then I put a tombstone cookie cutter around the glob of dip and with the plastic wrap I shaped it into a tombstone.
You are supposed to cover the tombstone with black pepper and then carve RIP into the front but I screwed that part up. I first carved RIP into the dip. No big deal. I did the pepper covering and then re-dug out the letters R I P. Getting the pepper on the sides of the tombstone was pretty challenging but does it ever look effective!.
You make the grave plot with the rest of the cream cheese. Get out your decorative plate and smear the centre with the spread and top with some ground pepper, then coarsely chopped parsley. So clever!
Add the crackers and the tombstone. My tombstone was a bit top heavy so I braced it with a strong cracker behind it.
You know when you look at the photos of recipes and get so excited to make something look as cool as it does in the magazine? And then it doesn’t and you get all disappointed? Well that did not happen with this recipe. It worked out great and I love how my tombstone looked!
This dip was super tasty, almost spicy and looked fantastic. A very clever and easy way to make a Halloween cheese plate for your party that no one will forget. I give this recipe four and a half out of five wooden spoons.
That looks fun and I bet it was delicious with all those things whizzed together!