An Easy, Inexpensive Cheese Board for Valentine’s Day

I like to keep Valentine’s Day easy and affordable. After pricy holidays like Christmas and New Year’s, I like giving my bank account a little break, but still want to make things special. I make my husband an elegantly simple dinner, an easy, but decadent dessert, and like to start with a simple cheese plate like this.

Cheeseboards can get quite expensive if you want to add dry fruits, nuts, sliced meats, or other pricy, treats.

This fancy ensemble cost about $30 (not including the preserves I already had in the fridge) but you could easily bring the price down further if you substituted brie for double cream and perhaps Cabot for Dubliner, and it would be just as pretty and tasty.

Why You’ll Love This Cheese Board

The ingredients are easy to find – You’ll have no trouble putting together this fancy cheese board with what you can find at your grocery store. 

That little heart will make them blush – It’s so cute and so simple to do. You just need a heart-shaped cookie cutter and a spoon to gently scoop off the rind.

It really takes just 5 minutes to put together – If you have to rush after work to put something special together for your date, this is perfect. You’ll have an elegant cheese board and 2 glasses of champagne ready in no time!

Ingredient Notes

Crackers – I used La Panzanella artisan crackers. I like that they’re longer than most crackers and fit easily between the cheeses.

Olives – The red ones are Italian Cerignola olives.

Strawberry Preserves – You can use just about any kind of preserves, I just like it because it was red. But you can also use mustard for a more savory balance to the sweet berries.

Double Cream Cheese – I like to use a round, creamy cheese in the center like double cream, but you can also use brie, camembert, Bonne Bouche, or even Boursin.

Dubliner Cheese – I chose Dubliner because it’s a nice, semi-hard cheese that I can slice and lay nicely on the board, but you can use just about any similar, sliceable cheese like cheddar, gouda, Havarti, gruyere, fontina, or manchego.

Goat Cheese – It’s nice to have another easily-spreadable cheese like goat cheese, but a Humboldt Fog, petit brie, trillium or teleeka are also very nice additions.

How to Assemble The Cheese Board

1. Place the double cream in the center, and gently press a heart-shaped cookie cutter into the center. Just enough to cut the rind. 

2. Remove the cookie cutter, and use a small spoon to gently scoop the rid out.

3. Fill the heart with preserves. I’ll sometimes use a toothpick to refine the edges a bit.

4. Place 5-6 crackers on each side of the cheese.

5. Gently stack raspberries to the right. It’s ok if they fall a little, you can fix them when you add more crackers and cheese later.

6. Add olives to the left of the crackers. Again, it’s ok if they tumble a bit. You can fix them once the other crackers and cheese are placed.

7. Add 5 more crackers to the left of the olives and goat cheese on the end.

8. Slice Dubliner cheese into snack-able slices, and place with a few more crackers to the right of the raspberries.

To make it extra pretty, add a few flowers like baby’s breath or waxflower (like I used), to the raspberries. You only need a few to make it look so delicate and romantic.