Creepy Halloween Hand

Step 1

To start, allow 16 oz of cream cheese to soften slightly at room temperature for about 15-20 minutes. Then, in a large bowl, mix together the cream cheese with your desired flavorings (I used 1 Tbsp each of garlic powder and onion powder and 1/2 Tbsp each of dried basil and oregano).

Step 2

Place your prosciutto/mozzarella log down on your serving platter of choice as the wrist bone. Make sure you leave enough room on your platter for the rest of the hand! (PS: You don't have to use saran wrap, I just did that because I needed it for photographing on my chalkboard!) If you were unable to find a pre-made prosciutto/mozzarella roll, you can simply use an extra 8 oz of cream cheese and 2 oz of prosciutto. (Just be sure to increase your seasoning amounts to compensate for the extra cream cheese!)

Step 3

Spoon out about 1 C worth of your cream cheese mixture to make the palm of the hand at the base of the wrist bone. Smooth a little over the top of the prosciutto log to make it continuous.

Step 4

Next, roughly create the 5 fingers with your remaining cream cheese mixture, saving a little for touch-ups. You can use a small spatula for this, but I find it is easier to just use your fingers.

Step 5

Smooth out all of the fingers and add extra cream cheese as needed to give the form of a true hand. Don't forget to add a little extra "hand meat" between the thumb and palm and the pinky finger and palm to make the hand look more realistic.

Step 6

Nothing here has to be too smooth or perfect because you're going to be lining it with prosciutto, but keep in mind that prosciutto is very thin so you'll at least want to have the thickness of the fingers correct!

Step 7

Cover the cream cheese entirely with prosciutto pieces. I find that it looks more realistic/creepy to rip the prosciutto into smaller pieces first, rather than just laying it down in full sheets. This also gives you some of the creepy looking fat strips, too! This will also make it simpler to eat because the smaller pieces will easily break off with crackers or a cheese knife rather than having to constantly slice through a large piece of prosciutto with each bite!