How to make a Simple Cheese Board

If you have friends or family over, and you want to offer something to snack on without spending a long time in the kitchen, this Simple Cheese Board is what you are looking for.

Having a newborn baby at home, brought loads of visits. Now, our baby boy Luca is 14 months old, but we still have people over for food and drinks or just paying a visit quite often. We like to offer them something to eat but we never knew what to bring out as we don't buy biscuits or other tea pastries. When we started making these cheese boards, people loved them. It is a great midday snack, or even a starter for a barbeque, family meals or dinner parties. The best part is that Luca can dig in as well (apart from the cheese at the moment), and he really loves it! Most of our friends have similar age toddlers, and it's a perfect choice for everyone. So let's see how to make a simple cheese board at home.

What goes on a proper Cheese Board

• Cheese, of course. Choose 4-5 different types of cheese for your board. An assortment of cheese with a different texture, colour, and taste is what you need to please everyone. Some examples of cheese that will make a great board are: mozzarella or goat cheese for soft cheese, a piece of smoked cheese, a piece of blue cheese like gorgonzola and some hard cheese such as manchego.
• Crackers. This is the second most important ingredient. We love crackers at home, so we normally have a good variety in the pantry. Astra's favourites are poppy-seed crackers, he cannot get enough of them every time we visit our family in Ireland.
• Dips. A good board needs delicious dips. We love adding homemade hummus such as our beetroot hummus, roasted red pepper hummus or edamame hummus together with homemade pesto. Another great dip for cheese boards is Baba Ganoush.

• Nuts. Add Almonds, walnuts, pecan nuts, cashews or any other type of nuts that suits your taste. This is not baby or toddler-friendly. You can always make a cashew cream with soaked cashews for toddlers. Keep the nuts away from the little ones!
• Fresh or dried fruit. A proper board needs some fresh fruit to bring down all the saltiness from the cheese and crackers. Grapes are the best fruit to serve with cheese. In Spain, we have a saying: "Uva con queso sabe a beso".Which means grapes with cheese tastes like a kiss. If you have babies or toddlers around, cut the grapes in 4 pieces. Figs, raspberries, blackberries or blueberries also go really good on a cheeseboard. Dry fruit works really well too such as dates or dried apricots.
• Homemade marmalade or chutney. To be honest, we don't make marmalade or chutney at home, at least not yet. But my mum and aunty do, so we take advantage of that and always have some at home. Fig marmalade or tomato chutney is a great option to go with cheese.
• Olives. Finish the board with some olives. Our toddler Luca loves them and so do we! Black Greek olives are our favourite.

Keep adding different dips and ingredients and you'll eventually end up with a board like these:

So with all these ingredients, you can build an amazing cheese board that will keep everyone happy. When we know people are coming over, we try to prepare the hummus and pesto ahead so we can have it ready. When the dips are prepared, the board can be put together in 15 minutes. If you have no time to prepare the dips at home, you can always buy good quality hummus and pesto instead of making it at home.

The best part of a cheese board is that you can make it different every time and never get bored!