Easy Holiday Cheese and Charcuterie Board

Happy Sunday guys! So today I want to share a super easy cheese and charcuterie board DIY with you. I absolutely LOVE to entertain and this is a MUST HAVE whenever I have people over. It’s super simple and takes only a few minutes to put together. There’s literally a million reasons why I love these but I wont bore you lol just know that this could seriously take your hosting game to the next level! Let’s get started…

First things first let’s talk about the basics! When building your cheese and charcuterie board there are a few things to keep in mind. You want to make sure to keep a variety of texture, color, and shape. When making my boards I always try to have at least three types of cheese, 3 types of crackers, a fruit or two, some sort of olives, and something crunchy like candied nuts.

When it comes to cheese, I always try to have at least one hard cheese, one soft cheese, and one with some sort of fruit in or on it just to give some variety. For this board I chose to use Brie as my soft cheese, Gouda as my hard cheese, and a cranberry chèvre (goat cheese) log as my sweeter cheese. As far as olives go blue cheese stuffed olives are a personal favorite of mine so that’s what I use, but feel free to use whatever you prefer! You could even use sweet and spicy pickles in place of the olives or in addition to.

I usually start by placing my olives in the center of the tray and then working my cheese around them. Most of the time you have to play around with the different elements until you have them positioned where you want them.

Okay so here I’ve added all three cheeses to the board. Excuse the liner under the cranberry cheese I wasn’t quite ready to serve this yet and didn’t want to stain my board! lol

Okay moving on to meats… I usually use the same three meats which are prosciutto, hard salami, and capocollo. I love the fact that Trader Joe’s actually has all three of these in a package together for about six dollars so that seems like a no brainer to me lol I don’t know about you guys but the easier the better!!

Next, center the meat between the different cheeses. I like to do somewhat of a fold to the meat to make them lay in a way that’s more appealing than just laying them flat on the board. You can play around with this part until you get it the way you like!

So as far as crackers go I personally just like to try to get a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors IF possible. Trader Joe’s also has a variety pack of crackers (comes with three different types) that I like to use. If I didn’t mention this somewhere in this post yet I was able to get everything for this board from Trader Joe’s.. again, ALWAYS choose the path of least resistance lol word to the wise. Convenience is key!!

Okay, here I went in with the three different types of crackers between the different cheeses and meats. You can’t see from this picture, but there is a third type of cracker on the back of the board.

Last but not least I went in and filled in the empty spaces with my fruits and nuts. I use grapes on the vine, some pecan pralines, and some fresh cranberries as a garnish.