TikTok's Edible Amputated Hands Give Charcuterie A Chilling Halloween Twist

Halloween is one of the most anticipated holidays of the year for kids and adults. Kids may be looking forward to amassing mountains of candy, but adult Halloween parties warrant a more creative snack spread. TikTok's edible amputated hands are the chilling centerpiece that'll freak out your guests and then quickly turn them into enthusiastic cannibals.

In a viral video, TikTok foodie Genevieve LaMonaca shows how to make this amputated arm charcuterie board with prosciutto skin wrapped around flesh made from assorted cheeses. The velvety texture and marble of the prosciutto makes for the perfect edible skin. Chef LaMonaca traces her arm and hand with a pencil, creating an outline to fill with the various edible anatomical components.

For the arm, she uses a prosciutto wrapped mozzarella roll, and the fingers are simple prosciutto wrapped paninos. She assembles the edible arm and fingers over the parchment paper outline, creating a wrist and top of the palm with an herb and spice infused cream cheese. Once the cream cheese has been smoothed and molded to seamlessly connect the arm and fingers, thin slices of prosciutto are placed over the exposed cream cheese flesh. For the finishing touch, LaMonaca places triangles of sliced red onion over each finger tip for the nails.

The arm and fingers were premade in the video, but you can make the fingers by wrapping prosciutto around string cheese. Use the technique in these cream cheese and prosciutto pinwheels to roll the fresh mozzarella and prosciutto arm.

The TikTok video is a helpful guide on how to create this chilling amputated limb, and LaMonaca takes it a step further by severing one of the fingers and placing it at a precarious distance. However, you can utilize the technique with completely different ingredients. The simplest tweak to this recipe would be to season the cream cheese with different herbs or even using a particular flavor of cream cheese, like garlic herb, chive and onion, or jalapeño. Stud your cream cheese filling with blue cheese to give the cream cheese flesh a more realistic veiny visual.

For the pinwheel arm, you can swap fresh mozzarella for another pliable type of cheese, like provolone. Add fresh herbs like basil and sun dried tomatoes to the cheese and prosciutto wheel for depth of flavor. Substitute string cheese sticks for finger-shaped melon slices for another chilling take on a traditional Italian appetizer.

You could ditch the Italian theme altogether by using this recipe for jalapeño popper pinwheels as the arm wrapped with boiled bacon. Make the fingers out of bacon-wrapped jalapeño poppers, and fill in the rest of the anatomy with a mixture of cream cheese and taco seasoning.

For a sweet version, fruit roll ups could be the skin to wrap around a fruit and sponge cake roll for the arm, vanilla ladyfingers for the fingers, and strawberry or cinnamon and brown sugar-flavored cream cheese to fill in the hand and wrist.