Holiday Cheese Boards & Knives

Indulge All Season with Holiday Cheese Boards

If there's one food most people wish they could indulge in more often, it's probably cheese. Luckily, when the holiday season is here, you have plenty of reasons to dig into the holiday cheese boards. Create delicious arrangements and pairings for your family and friends all season long.

Choose Your Cheese Board Style

Stay one step ahead of the party by putting out several boards, trays and platters.

• Use wooden boards for earthier cheeses. Look for ones that look like tree trunk slices for rustic appeal.
• For soft cheeses that need to stay cool, try a marble or slate board. The slate board lets you write what cheeses everyone is enjoying right on the board.
• Wooden pedestals add height at a party with a lot of platters. Use these to feature special cheeses you selected just for the holiday season.

Complement Your Boards with Holiday Cheese Knives

Be sure to put out plenty of knives to go with your cheese boards. This makes sampling and tasting fun and convenient.

• Ideally, you should have one knife for each kind of cheese, particularly the right kind of knife.
• A sharp knife with a forked tip is usually used to slice and serve hard cheeses.
• A spade cuts wedges of hard cheeses easily and helps serve them on the flat side of the blade.
• A gorgonzola knife is slightly angled with a routed tip to help spread bleu cheeses on crackers or apples.
• A soft cheese knife has a round edge, also for spreading.
• A cheese knife that looks like a wide, flat shovel is for crumbly cheeses.

Arrange the Perfect Cheese Board for Your Party

Decide upon your pairings when you plan your menu. In general, cheese, fruit and bread arranged across beautiful cheese boards make a delightful spread that guests flock around to sample.

• Keep wine by the bar or a counter with party buckets. These two stations will be popular around the holidays, so let people mix and mingle between them.
• Put out one or two cheese per board, plus fruit and a row of bread chunks or slices.
• Make it easy to figure out which board has what. Group cheeses by type or origin.

The final tip is almost too obvious -- stock up on lots of cheese. You're going to need it or, at least, really want it.