Carla Hall's Sweet Spin On A Viral Food Trend Became A Controversial Hit

While renowned chef and TV host Carla Hall specializes in comfort food, she also has plenty of unique ideas when it comes to desserts. For example, Hall believes cake batter should be lumpy in order to produce perfectly airy confections. Conversely, one of her more controversial opinions (and recipes) pertains to dessert-forward butter boards.

If you're unfamiliar, the viral butter board trend took off in 2022 and involves covering platters with softened butter and topping it with ingredients like honey, bacon, cheese, and chives. The spreads are then served with shareable snacks like crackers, crostini, and veggies. While the booming popularity of butter boards eventually led to butter flights: another unique way to experiment with your bread course, Hall decided to completely reinvent this concept for dessert lovers.

Instead of butter, Hall leapt ahead and created a board featuring various flavors of homemade cookie butter. Needless to say, this quirky, unconventional treat quickly became a controversial yet popular recipe. Unlike traditional butter boards which are typically savory, shareable snack platters with butter as the primary base, Hall reinvented the concept entirely and paired a range of cookie butters with extras like sliced fruit, brioche bread, pretzels, and graham crackers. While her idea quickly took off and became an internet sensation, select foodies looked down on her one-of-a-kind recipe, claiming the idea of a sharable dessert board was not only unhealthy but also unsanitary.

At the time of its debut, most of the controversy surrounding Carla Hall's unconventional cookie butter platter aligned directly with criticisms against the butter board trend as a whole. For some, the idea of double-dipping any food among a group of people was not only unappetizing but seemed to be an efficient way to spread germs from person to person.

Next to the worry of spreading bacteria, some believed the board would become a complete mess after enough servings, while others claimed a sugar-filled cookie butter board was downright unhealthy. Still, even with these mild concerns, many of Hall's fans continue to believe the chef's innovative board remains an ingenious idea.

When Hall showcased her monochrome board of cookie butter on Instagram in late 2022, the response was mostly positive. Prepared with over five different varieties of cookie butter including varieties like Oreo, ginger snap, and peanut butter, the platter is both visually appealing and simultaneously alluring to dessert lovers. 

To make this noteworthy platter pleasing to all foodies, Hall advises serving her cookie butter board with multiple mini serving spoons and knives. Additionally, Hall suggests serving the spreads in Mason jars. Since her cookie butter recipes contain milk, this makes it easier to store any unused portions in your refrigerator. Sure enough, with a few extra preparation steps, Carla Hall's unconventional cookie butter board remains a reliable yet fun way to serve dessert to a crowd.