Cracker Boards

[Elisabetta Buendia]

Ourcracker board is perfect for someone who is looking for something already ready in presentation form. While you do receive crackers on the side complimentary with your boards, the cracker board has more variety and are displayed beautifully on the board ready to eat.

made in Vermont by the outstanding craftsmen at J.K. Adams, our maple cracker round board is the perfect addition to any of our maple base pieces. make a spread of fruits, nuts, cheeses, and add this cracker round board to finish the look.

This cheese board features vegetables, fruits, nuts, and crackers for has the perfect balance of snacks to keep everyone happy until the feast is ready. It would be great served on its own for a school party or playdate. This simple turkey snack board makes a great addition to your grown up Thanksgiving charcuterie board!

Maegan is the author of her best-selling Beautiful Boards, Spectacular Spreads and Brilliant Bites cookbooks. She started blogging in 2012 and features hundreds of original recipes on The BakerMama. She truly enjoys sharing her easy, family-friendly recipes, creative meal ideas, food board creations, and entertaining spreads to encourage others to get in the kitchen and make something memorable for their loved ones to enjoy together. Learn More

And yes - this post is titled "how to make a cheese plate," but you can follow these basic steps to make allllll kinds of party platters! Our cheese plate today has a bit of meat included (cheese and charcuterie FTW!) and I also like to round things out with crackers, fruit, sausage, or whatever seasonal produce I have on hand (more on that later!)

I'll cover things like building seasonal cheese plates, what to include on your cheese plate, and how to make a cheap cheese plate (because BUDGET) later on - but let's start with the ASSEMBLY. Cheese plates can look very proper and fancy, but I'm going to let you in on a secret: It is SO. EASY. to build a fancy cheese plate - you just need to follow this basic order of operations.

A lot of people like to start with the cheese, but I prefer to start by placing some little bowls around my cheese board. Why? Because it helps me make part of the cheese plate ahead of time. If I know I'm making a cheese plate for a party, I'll set out the cutting board (I'm using a 15"-ish wood board from Target - it's no longer in stock but I found a similar one here) and place the bowls the night before so it's ready to go. You can skip the bowls if you like, but I like using them to hold dips and smaller items - plus, the height and round shape helps break up the cheese board to make it more fun to look at. (PS - Swap small store-bought jars of jam or honey, roasted red peppers, or pesto for the bowls here if you like!)

Next, add the cheeses. Cheese should really be served at room temperature, which means you should take it out of the fridge and let it rest for 30 minutes to an hour before serving (learn more in this post). You can do this two ways: One, take the cheeses out of the fridge, throw them on the counter, and come back later to add them to the cheese plate. Or two, unwrap and cut the cheeses straight out of the fridge, then place them on the cheese plate and let them come to temperature on the board (pro tip: cover the cheese with beeswax wrap or plastic wrap to prevent them from drying out).

I like to serve cheeses in a variety of shapes to add visual interest. Soft cheeses, like the brie and goat cheese in this photo, can be served as is. For hard cheeses, like the cheddar and parmesan, I prefer to cut them into slices or cubes and stack them up on the board - this makes it easier for guests to grab a piece without having to saw through a hard cheese with a cheese knife and makes the cheese plate more interesting.

You can add your meats a few different ways: In a simple stack (saves time if you're in a rush), fanned out in a line or half-circle (works best on large boards since this takes up more space) or by folding larger pieces into fun shapes (takes up less space and adds some visual interest).

Next, the bread! Because I want to devote as much real estate as possible to the cheese, I put just a handful of of crostini or crackers on the plate and set out a bowl full of extra crackers for those who want them. Fan out crackers or crostini along the edges of the cheese plate to make them easy to grab.

Now that the big pieces are on our cheese plate, it's time to have some fun and start filling in the gaps! This is where a cheese plate really starts to come together (and where you get the WOW factor that will have your party guests asking you to teach THEM how to assemble a cheese plate!)

First, add some fruit. We used grapes here, but you can use any fruit (or veggies!) you have on hand. I like to break the fruit into relatively small pieces and scatter it in a few places across the board - I put grapes on either side of this cheese plate to help it look balanced (and make it easy for guests to grab a grape from either side!)

Next, add nuts! We used walnuts and almonds here. Drop a few nuts into the smaller blank spaces on the middle of your board to add some texture and cover any open spots. Leave a few spaces around the edges for olives or any extras you're adding!

If you're using olives, add them now! You can place them anywhere you'd like; to assemble this cheese board, I opted for some green olives on the board itself and some black olives in one of our small bowls. We have a love-hate relationship with olives in my house, so I include them on cheese plates about half the time.

YOU'RE ALMOST DONE! At this point, you have alllllllll the good stuff ready to go and have assembled a great cheese plate (WOOT). All that's left is to fill in any remaining teeny gaps to make your cheese board look full and inviting.

I ALWAYS opt to fill any last little spaces with something green. I find it helps break up the color since cheese plates tend to lean very red/white/brown. For this cheese plate, we chose fresh arugula, but you could also use fresh herbs (I love adding rosemary sprigs to a cheese plate!) Arugula is my go-to because it's almost always in my fridge, and the leaves are small and flexible enough that I can really tuck them into small spaces (plus, a crostini + brie + arugula + walnuts + a grape + honey = THE BEST BITE EVER).

There are SO many choices when it comes to building your cheese plate - and there's really no right or wrong way to do it! I'll outline my basic guidelines below (including how many varieties from each category to include) and some ingredient lists for inspiration, but don't be afraid to make it your own!

As a general rule, I like to include the following categories on a cheese plate (keeping in mind that I want about a 50/50 mix of hard and soft cheeses, and that some cheeses might hit two of these bullet points!)

Those distinctions can be useful, but in the case of cheese plate building, I find it's easier to think about cheeses in just two groups: HARD (cheeses that you need a sharp knife to cut easily & that you'll likely cut before putting them on the cheese plate) and SOFT (cheeses that are often somewhat spread-able and easy to cut with a butter knife or cheese spreader).

My best advice for choosing cheeses, though? Make friends with the people at your grocery store cheese counter! We haven't always lived by a store with a great cheese selection, but the last few years we've been lucky to live by a Wegmans with allllllll the cheese you could ever dream of.

My strategy is to grab a few cheeses I KNOW I want to include - usually a sharp white cheddar and a good goat cheese - and then pop by the cheese counter and ask them what's new and delicious (if I still need an out-of-the-box cheese for my cheese board, I ask them to show me something totally wild. They always deliver).

But enough about cheese! (JK we all know we can never talk enough about cheese) Let's talk accompaniments! This is a short(ish) list, because this post is getting loooooooong - refer to the how-to instructions and the seasonal cheese plate lists for more ideas and suggestions!

If you're serving a cheese plate as an appetizer, plan to have 2-3 oz. of cheese per person. If you're serving a lot of accompaniments (like charcuterie, crackers, and fruit) alongside the cheese, people will eat a little less cheese. Fewer accompaniments? Plan for people to eat a little more.

If you're worried you have too much cheese, cut all of your cheeses in half and put out one half at a time - you can always take the rest out later if you need it! Having a little extra cheese in the fridge for later is never a bad thing. Worried you don't have enough? Cut hard cheeses into extra-small pieces, spread each cheese out over a few different spots on the cheese board, and add plenty of extra fruit, nuts, and crackers.

(For reference, the cheese plate we made for these photos served about 10 people as an appetizer. We put out some extra crackers, crostini, and charcuterie halfway through, but we ended up with just the right amount of cheese).

Use this list as a general guide - these are the ingredients we used to build this exact cheese plate, but don't be afraid to mix it up using your favorite snacks and cheeses or anything you have on hand!

Equipment. I love a nice wooden cutting board for my cheese plates, but use whatever you have on hand! A plastic cutting board or large dinner plate works just fine. Use a few butter spreaders or fun cheese knives to serve.

These crisp, light crackers that are the ideal complement to just about any cheese out there. The mild flavor makes them versatile for pairing, and the lightness of each cracker provides just the right amount of crunch without being overly filling. Our go-to cracker when making cheese boards! 4.5oz box.

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