Easy Holiday Entertaining with Boursin

The holiday season has kicked into high gear, and everyone is busy busy busy trying to get their preparations done. I know for my friends, we've been running around like mad people in anticipation of the holiday season and we all just need a bit of an excuse to let loose and celebrate, rather than stress. For this reason, I decided that an intimate holiday party was in order, and threw a day-time shindig to celebrate the holiday season with some of my closet friends. Now, when it comes to entertaining, I'm no Martha - but I can whip together a mean cheese plate, and my cheese plate always features Boursin.

Boursin cheese has always been my go-to when planning out my holiday parties. I just love how there are so many flavours to choose from, and the texture and taste pairs so well with so many different ingredients. For my holiday party, I picked up the Cranberry & Pepper flavour and build my cheese board off of that flavour profile. Needless to say, the subtle spice from the pepper and festive cranberry flavour got everyone into the holiday spirit and my holiday get-together was a huge success.

Since I've gone ahead and tooted my own horn about my cheese plate making skills, I'm going to share a few tips and tricks that I always use when crafting my cheese plates for easy entertaining.

My Tips For Building the Ultimate Cheese Board

• Be sure to include cheeses that all of your guests would enjoy. It should go without saying, but sometimes it's easy to be distracted by your own tastebuds and to loose sight of those of your guests. For example, for my holiday party I knew that one of my guests doesn't enjoy spicy foods. For this reason, instead of opting for Boursin Red Chili Pepper, which is one of my favourites because of the spice, I instead chose to accompany my Pepper and Cranberry Boursin with a mellow Garlic and Fine Herbs.

• Don't be afraid to mix flavour profiles. I always love to include both savoury and sweet elements to my cheese boards, with a variety of different foods for both flavour profiles. For my day-time holiday cheese board, I mixed different savoury meats with briny olives, sweet honeycomb, salted nuts and sugary dried apricots. Each ingredient is very different from one another, but all pair nicely with my Boursin cheese and gives lots of variety to my cheese board.

• My philosophy when crafting a cheese board is 'more is more.' For me, I love when every inch of my board is covered, so it looks like there's an abundance of different foods to be enjoyed. I always strive to make people comfortable when entertaining, and I find a cheese board that looks like it's overflowing with ingredients is much more inviting than one that is sparsely decorated. 

Check out some photos from my intimate holiday party, with my friends Sabrina of My Miaou and Didier of Didier YHC.

What do you guys think? Have you tried Boursin cheese? What are your tips for easy holiday entertaining? Let me know!

xo Joëlle

This post was created in collaboration with Boursin. All thoughts and opinions are 100% my own