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How To Make a Cheese Board, With GRAPE and Fig Founder, Toria Smith

Toria Smith is the founder of GRAPE & Fig, specialists in creating stunning grazing platters that are almost too beautiful to eat. We asked Toria to turn her artistry to our fabulous new cheeses. Here’s how she built a vibrant masterpiece of a cheeseboard that’s bound to leave your family and friends swooning in admiration, and it only takes three steps!

STEP ONE - Always start with your cheese: place your cheeses (and crackers and chutney) in and around your wooden board.

At GRAPE & Fig we always start with our cheese when building a cheese board. This particular board includes 13 different cheeses from around the British Isles (that’s a lot!), so it’s a good idea to place the individual cheeses on your board before opening and styling them. This makes sure they are spread out evenly across the board and you can group certain cheeses together (for example on this board we’ve grouped the Cornish cheeses, the Christmas Collection, and the Best of British together). Once the cheeses are opened, cut and styled on a board, it’s a little more difficult to move them around, so this is a perfect time to style in your crackers and chutney dishes, too.

Top tip - cheese should be served at room temperature, so make sure your cheeses are refrigerated beforehand, and they should reach room temperature during the process of creating the board.  

STEP TWO - Cut cheeses and style onto board, open crackers and decant the chutney.  

Next, take each cheese and cut and style onto the board. As you can see from the photo, we have cut each cheese in a slightly different way to add variety of shapes and visual interest. Let the shape and size of the cheese help you decide how to cut it; for example the gorgeous Driftwood by White Lake Cheese Somerset Dairy is cylinder in shape, so lends itself to be cut into mini medallions. Also, cheese cut into cubes or slices makes it easier for guests to grab a piece without struggling with a cheese knife (especially if it’s a hard cheese!). At this stage you can decant the chutney into a small dish.  

STEP THREE - Add in fresh produce to fill in the gaps & add garnish to finish.

Now that the ‘heroes’ of the board are ready, it’s time to have some fun and fill in the gaps with accoutrements and fresh produce; here we have used grapes, celery, dried cranberries, apricots, fresh figs and blackberries, but feel free to use any of your favourite accompaniments. This is when the cheese board really comes together, and adds some much needed colour. We like to cluster these elements in groups of three in and around the board, filling in any spaces and open spots! 

Lastly, if you have any foliage or edible flowers, add them on and voilà, you’re done! All you need to do now is sit back and enjoy your creation with friends and family! 

Shop from our exquisite selection of brilliant British cheeses and moreish cheese board must-haves here, and have fun getting creative!