What happens when you take your favorite brunch foods, combine them with the ease of a charcuterie board, and invite a few friends over? Ta da! You get a beautiful brunch board gathering!
Welcome to my latest hospitality invention! I can think of a million opportunities to use the brunch board, including an outdoor after-church Easter meal. The brunch board marries functionality and elegance with ease and effortless presentation. Basically, brunch boards are going to change your life as a hostess, and today I am going to share all the secrets to making this beautiful spread come together for your next gathering!
DO NOT COOK ANYTHING.
You heard correctly. Don’t cook. Sure, if you’re jonesing to turn on your oven, of course you can. But one perk of this brunch board is that it does not require cooking in order to be amazing. I did not make a single thing on this board. All of it is store bought, which is a huge part of what makes this board so magical. Scroll down to see all the components I included.
PICK A COLOR SCHEME.
In my brunch board, I decided to choose pink as my anchor color. Pink labels, pink berries, pink jam, pink flowers, pink napkins. Whenever I had options, I chose pink. Everything coordinates and looks amazing because I chose one color and stuck with it. At the last minutes I threw in the bright orange clementines, which were a nice accent. I can imagine a version of this board that is centered around green (kiwi, grapes, limes, etc.) , yellow (lemon everything!), or even white (with a pop of gold).
BUY SMALL.
Individual servings of jam. Mini scones. Single-serve champagne. Tiny bars. Yogurt for one. You get the idea. When you buy present small portions, the entire board feels approachable. Small bites and little nibbles encourage your guests to take a bite. And then another and another. Tiny food is fun to eat and looks spectacular!
CONTAIN AND STACK.
Put your tiny portions together in their own shallow bowl on their own elevated plate. If you look at the photos of my brunch board, everything has a home, and there is a variety of heights, which keeps the board from looking like a mess. Height variations and the contained items are pleasing on the eye.
ONE STOP SHOPPING.
Everything on this board was purchased in one trip to Central Market (except for the Raspberry Crumble Bars which I snagged from Hurley House and the individual Bonne Maman jams which you can find on Amazon). I went in with a list of what I wanted, but based on what they had available, I had to flex a little bit. The beautiful part is it only took one shopping trip to have everything I needed, including flowers. When it was time to assemble the board, it took fifteen minutes to go from package to what you see.
Here are the ingredients I included…
FOOD
Quiche or Egg Casserole, cut into large cubes
Fresh fruit (berries, clementines)
Breakfast bread (mini scones, mini croissants, quick breads cut into cubes)
Individual Yogurt Cups (I loved the ones in the cute glass jars)
Granola
Sweet Treat (dessert bar cut into minis, tiny cookies)
Fun Add-Ons (yogurt pretzels, chocolate covered almonds, anything goes!)
BEVERAGES
Individually packaged iced coffees or oat milk lattes
Individual bottles of champagne
Individual cans of sparkling orange soda
DECORATIONS
Colorful cocktail napkins
Fresh flowers, arranged in small bud vases or pitchers
This list is only a guide…you can include anything that sounds interesting or looks good! As I was shopping (and picking out lots of pink), I was thinking how cute this idea would be for a baby shower. Or a wedding shower. Or a graduation party. Or a girls’ gathering.
The brunch board is a beautiful, easy, elegant way to serve delicious food at any gathering! I can’t wait to hear how you put this idea to use in your hospitality practice!
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