I have your next party appetizer riiiight here.
It’s not really a recipe, but that’s why I love it so much. It’s all about buying and assembling, one of my favorite entertaining tips.
When entertaining, I like to cook and bake a few dishes, but when it comes to the appetizer, I usually buy some special ingredients from the store and assemble it right before we sit down to eat.
It’s one less thing I have to think about making, plus I LOVE arranging. I think that’s why I loved making these Chocolate Coins so much (which I totally recommend for your next gathering btw), they are so much fun to create!
Not only are store-bought appetizers easy on the hostess, but they are also a lot of fun for guests to eat. I make sure to buy items everyone will genuinely enjoy snacking on. I often serve roasted herb nuts, chummus with lots of fresh vegetables like endive and asparagus, or salami slices with cucumbers and tomatoes.
All simple, but fun, delicious, and require no cooking on my part.
Which (finally) brings us to today’s appetizer!
Charcuterie Cups with Apricot Mustard Sauce!
I don’t know about you, but I have been seriously crushing on all those gorgeous cheese boards everyone is posting on Instagram lately.
I’m sure I’ll make some kind of cheeseboard in the coming months, but until then, I wanted to create something similar, but on an easier and much smaller scale.
For those of you who have never heard of a charcuterie board, it’s basically a board filled with lots of meats, dips, crackers, nuts and fruit. It’s similar to a cheese board, except it’s allll about the meat 😉
For my charcuterie cups with apricot mustard sauce, I obviously wanted to include lots of different meats and pickled items, but I also wanted some unexpected items too, like roasted garlic cloves and caper berries. They add an extra wow factor– my guests loved them!
I also rolled the pepperoni into roses. Aren’t they so cute!? They are so easy to make. Simply fold each round in half and roll. The other ingredients will keep them from unraveling.
I added a sweet mustard sauce (just mustard and apricot preserves), to the bottom of each cup, but you can add whatever dip you like. This recipe was also tested with a white creamy garlic dip, and it was delicious.
I bought all my pickled ingredients at a local pickle shop (my favorite place!) because I was able to choose the quantities of each item. But, you can find all of these items at your local grocery store too.
These charcuterie cups with apricot mustard sauce definitely give off that fun cheeseboard vibe, and are so incredibly easy to make. They only require you to bake the wonton wrappers in the oven for 8 minutes, and then the rest is just assembling. And, although I included a recipe, the ingredients and amounts are completely up to you. Use what you like.
AND if you want to make the wonton cups in advance before you fill them, you totally can. Simply bake and store in a container for up to 5 days.
Enjoy and have a great weekend! 🙂
That garlic though…yum!
- Cooking spray
- Wonton wrappers
- ¼ cup apricot preserves
- 1 tablespoon course grained mustard
- Cornichons
- Marinated olives
- Peppadews
- Caper berries
- Pickled artichoke hearts, halved
- Grape tomatoes, quartered
- Kosher Pepperoni, rolled
- Bundnerfleisch, rolled
- Kosher pepperoni sticks, halved lengthwise
- Roasted Garlic cloves
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray the inside of a muffin pan with oil. Press each wonton wrapper in the muffin cups, making sure to press the sides and bottoms into the cups. Bake for 8 minutes, or until lightly golden brown. Remove the wonton cups from the pan and place on a wire rack to cool completely.
- In a small bowl combine the preserves and mustard.
- Once the cups are cool, place a teaspoon of the mustard mixture into each cup. Then, fill with cornichons, olives, peppadews, capers, artichokes, tomatoes, and meat.
Bake the wonton cups, place in an airtight container, taking care not to crowd them, and fill when ready to serve. The unfilled wonton cups keep for 5 days.

These look so cute and fancy!! I love it!
Thanks Dalya! <3
Olives and Peppadews and Pepperoni oh my!!! and gorgeously displayed w/ yummy apricot glaze…thx for this…great Purim idea..love spice and capers et alia…
Thanks Lydia! I love these for Purim too. 🙂