Perfect for a bridal shower, engagement party, birthday, wedding, or Valentine’s Day/Galentine’s Day wine and cheese, these heart-shaped cheese boards are love on a plate. They’re easy to assemble and look so great that they double as decor. Make one heart-shaped cheese board to share with your sweetie, or several so that each guest at a party gets their very own antipasti station in the form of a mini graze board.
If you don’t have heart-shaped plates, you can also just place the items in a heart shape on a standard round, square, or rectangular plate or cheese board. This heart is full of traditional antipasti items including cheese, charcuterie, olives, and crudite, but you can fill yours with whatever your heart (or your sweetheart!) desires. Skip the meats and go veg, or plate chocolates, macarons, and cookies and make it a dessert course.
For this cheese and charcuterie, we took inspiration from romantic staples: hearts and flowers. It’s easier to make than it looks!
Cut hearts out of sliced jicama and hard cheese with heart-shaped cookie cutters.
Roll thin, round slices of meats and cheese, folded in half, into cones, then spread out the rounded edges into “petals” of roses. Do the same with some thinly sliced cucumber rounds.
Plate the heart. Set out the cheese and veg hearts (you can rest some on endive spears) and flowers, and add olives, sliced vegetables or fruit to fill in the shape.
Add garnishes. Tuck in a few bay leaves, plus our printable leaves “calligraphed” with the word LOVE. (You can also print in a plain version to fill in with any word you like, or people’s names so that the leaves double as placecards.)
What You’ll Need
- Printable Love Leaf template
- Green paper (or, pick any color you like)
- Scissors
- Heart-shaped plates
- Various sized heart-shaped cookie cutters
- Round, thin slices of meat like salami or soppressata
- Round, thin slices of cheese like provolone
- Toothpicks (optional, for securing “flowers”)
- Variety of other cheeses: Semi-soft blocks of cheese such as cheddar and fontina work best
- Fresh vegetables: We used radishes, cauliflower, cucumbers, endive, daikon radishes, and jicama
- Assortment of small olives
- Any other fruit or veg extras you like. We went for lupini/Fava beans and sliced figs
- Fresh bay leaves as garnish
How-To
Step One: Download Love leaf template onto green paper, print, and cut out.
Step Two: Using heart-shaped cookie cutters, cut hearts out of fontina and cheddar or other semi soft cheese slices.
Step Three: Slice daikon radish and jicama into ¼” slices. Then using cookie cutters, cut hearts out of slices.
Step Four: Lay a couple of endive spears on the heart as shown, then top it with a few cheese hearts. Fill the point of the heart with a few radish hearts.
Step Five: Make salami, cheese, and cucumber flowers: Take a thin round of meat or cheese and fold in half. Roll into a cylinder shape with the curved side at the top, and the fold at the bottom. Repeat with two other pieces of meat (or provolone), rolling each additional piece around the first cylinder. Then gently spread out the “petals.” Once you’ve finished your “rose,” you can use toothpicks to secure the roses at the base. Now, turn thinly sliced cucumber rounds into roses using the same technique, minus the toothpick.
Step Six: Add one meat flower, one cheese flower, and one cucumber flower around the endive and radish, filling in two thirds of the heart and leaving the top right section empty.
Step Seven: Cut cauliflower into small pieces and add to the empty section of the plate, along with thinly sliced radishes, Lupini beans, quartered figs, and olives.
Step Eight: Once your heart is full, add garnishes: Tuck in a couple of bay leaves and one “Love” leaf onto each plate just before serving. Now you’re ready to celebrate to your heart’s content!
