You guys, I told you before the break,
she invented cheese by numbers,
like paint by numbers.
She takes the guess work out of the coolest most solid thing
to bring to any party or potluck.
The cheese platter. (applause)
Look at these. Oh yeah.
Cheese by numbers.
Is this not brilliance.
Oh, my God, does it hurt to have a head so big?
Look at this. (applause)
You see?
And you can follow her on Instagram
and get cheese by numbers all the time.
You are a goddess.
Teach us. Thank you, thank you,
thank you. Please.
How did this start?
So it all started in college actually.
I was having a wine and cheese party with some friends.
Right. And I was looking
on the internet and trying to find a centralized place
for cheese plate inspiration.
You do a quick internet search,
and you see an article here, an article there,
but no one website that teaches you,
oh, here's how you make a cheese plate,
here are the steps, let's do it.
Right. So, I started an Instagram,
and just started posting my own photos,
my own cheese plates.
One of my really good friends, who's an illustrator,
Sarah, she illustrated the plates for me,
and I came up with this paint by number,
cheese by number system and it actually works really well.
Take it away. All right, so.
Show people the basics of building a cheese plate.
This is the basics.
So you start with your plate.
I'm using this round plate,
because with the cheese by numbers technique,
it's easy for me to work in clockwise.
So I'm gonna put my ramekins down first
to create kind of a structure over all
so you can build around this.
So first is boards and ramekins.
The first step on the map,
which is number one is always the cheese,
so we're gonna take our cheeses.
Here we have, my rule of thumb is always something aged,
something hard, and something soft.
So our soft cheese is our Brie.
So Brie is a crowd pleaser, fan favorite.
We're just gonna put that down here.
Next we have a Gruyere.
So we're gonna put the Gruyere down here.
So then we have our aged goat cheese.
This one's real good.
We're gonna put that here.
All right, so next we're gonna do the meat.
Gotcha. Cheese and meat.
It's like a married couple, they're best friends.
So we have salami and prosciutto we're using here.
So if you want to help, Sure.
We can take the prosciutto, or take the salami first.
Take the salami, okay.
Fold it in half, and then fold it again.
Right. And we're just gonna put it
next to the goats cheese here. Little rosettes.
Yep. Makes little cute rosettes.
Little cute rosettes.
And so as you can see with the structure we have here,
we're gonna put the salami down the middle.
Okay, you want it-- we're gonna create
a salami river, as I call it. Okay.
And then I'm gonna take the prosciutto.
I just lightly crumple it in my hand
So it's easier for people to pick up
Exactly. a piece of prosciutto.
Don't just bring home a slab from the deli
and slop it on the plate. Exactly.
So next step, we're gonna do our fruits.
I have a pomegranate and I have some berries.
Pomegranate. Pomegranate is a great
winter fruit, so. Where you want it?
So let's put one right here
and then let's put one right here.
Gotcha. Just kinda spread it out.
And then put the berries right in here.
Right in here. Yep.
So you can do raspberries and then blackberries.
Gotcha. So as we have the fruit down
we can see that the color,
it's becoming super vibrant and abundant.
My key is creating,
you don't really want any gaps on the plate.
You want to fill it up as much as you can.
All right, so now we have our cherry peppers
and our green olives. Lovely.
These olives have been sitting in a brine,
so I want to put them in the ramekin,
so just they don't get olive juice everywhere.
Gotcha. Put these here.
And then you can put the cherry peppers,
just kind of lay them in this little gap
on top of the meat and cheese.
Gotcha. Yeah, just do a little.
That's good. Is that enough?
Perfect. Okay.
Great. There we go.
So we got our vegetables.
Next is the crunch segment which is crunchy items.
We've got pistachios, mixed nuts, and seeded crackers.
Okay. So you can sprinkle some
nuts, yep. Sprinkle some nuts here?
Okay, gotcha. So just fill in the gaps.
Fill in your, the holes. Fill in the holes,
and then we'll save some space for the crackers.
Okey doke.
And then these look amazing. Cracker spillage.
Oh, yeah, really good. Really seedy and yummy.
Lots of crunchy. Okay, so now.
And then florals? Well, we have this lone
ramekin here. Oh.
We need to fill it with something.
Naked ramekin. So we're gonna take
the cherry compote, and you can do fig jam,
you can do honey, there's a variety of things you can do.
But I love cherry compote, because it has this like--
(applause) Lovely.
Okay, last but not least.
My favorite part is the garnish.
Okay. So what we're gonna do
is just take some flowers and again fill in those gaps
with the little garnishes.
I like to kind of spread out the color as well.
Okay. And then we have rosemary,
which smells amazing and for the holidays.
It's also delicious. It's delicious.
And it looks like a pine tree, so.
And it looks like springs of pine.
(applause)
I'll just kinda put that around the edges.
Gorg. Perfect.
(applause)