You can’t beat a cheese board for holiday entertaining! Litehouse approached me to create a cheese board using their center cut cheese, which is cut from the center of a cheese wheel that has been aged 100 days,  and I jumped at the chance. I love having snacks for dinner and assembling cheese boards! It’s so fun and satisfying and requires little to no cooking. The cheese is already in a perfect circle and the packaging makes it super easy to turn it over on to a platter so all you have to do is arrange everything else around it.

When I was pulling together items for the board, I realized I couldn’t decide if I wanted to go sweet or savory. I think the rich creaminess and deep flavor of blue cheese pairs so wonderfully with both sweet/fruity and savory/smoky flavors.

Rather than decide I made two small boards that can be served together or separately and that would appeal to any blue cheese lover.  For the milder blue cheese, I paired it with a variety of sweeter accompaniments and for the more robust gorgonzola, I went with bold flavors like smoked meat and fish and mustard. I tied the two boards together by using figs and beets in both in different formats. Of course, you can serve this on one big board but I liked splitting it up to make pairings easier.

Sweet:

Litehouse Simply Artisan Blue Cheese Center Cut
brioche toasts
toasted pecans
roasted beets, cubed (can be made ahead and refrigerated)
raw honey
fig jam or fig preserves
semi-sweet chocolate squares

Savory:

Litehouse Simply Artisan Gorgonzola Center Cut
4 oz cracked black pepper cold smoked salmon
Halkidiki olives, roasted for 10 minutes with olive oil and rosemary at 350°
Truffle honey mustard
dried Mission figs
Serrano ham
beet crackers
garlic and chive pita chips

Serve both at room temperature.