Dessert Boards: 50 Beautifully Sweet Platters and Boards for Family, Friends, Holidays, and Any Occasion

by Kellie Hemmerly

Delight your family, friends, and guests—on holidays or any day—with beautiful boards full of scrumptious sweets.

With Kellie Hemmerly’s creative and gorgeous Dessert Boards, you can take the exciting trend of artfully composed food platters and boards in an entirely sweet new direction. The more than 50 easy-to-make boards in Kellie’s book are kid- and family-friendly, but grownups surely will love these dessert boards, too, whether the boards are served for a holiday party, a weekend visit from family or friends, or simply as a sweet finish to an everyday dinner.

The boards feature a stunning variety of sweet treats, from baked things like bars, cookies, shortbreads, bundt cakes, and mini pies, to fresh and colorful fruits of all kinds, to truffles, candies, s’mores, and more. The recipes include:

• Coffee Bar Board
• Molto Dolce Board (Italian Sweets Board)
• Fall Harvest Board
• Halloween Jack-o-Lantern Board
• Caramel Apple Dipping Board
• Birthday Confetti Board
• Cupcake Decorating Board
• Chocolate-Covered Everything Board
• Pie Love Board

The book also includes platters that focus on healthier sweets, such as fruits, yogurts, and granola bars, perfect for breakfast, brunch, and after-school or after-work snacks. There are inventive boards for people who love to bake as well as quick-fix boards that can be built from store-bought goods—everything you need to bring smiles to your family and friends and some extra sweetness to your life.

• ISBN13: 9780760372838
• Publish Date: 2 November 2021 (first published 21 September 2021)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 4 August 2023
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Harvard Common Press,U.S.
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 144
• Language: English

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally posted on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Dessert Boards is an exuberantly well curated ode to desserts with recipes by Kellie Hemmerly. Released 2nd Nov 2021 by Quarto on their Harvard Common Press imprint, it's 144 pages and is available in paperback format.

This is a well presented and easy to follow book full of good tips and tricks for presenting tasty food and creating a convivial atmosphere with platters and boards full of sweets. I like that the author has a very friendly upbeat style of writing and the food is beautiful.

The introduction covers the basics of building a board including the board itself (not necessarily wooden), bowls, serving utensils, and food considerations (including transportation logistics). The boards themselves are arranged thematically: early day (coffee, breakfast, etc), holidays, international, family gatherings, celebrations, and anytime. The boards contain both homemade treats (recipes in the back of the book) and store-bought additions such as fruit, trail mix, granola bars, donuts (no recipe included), croissants (ditto), and jams/jellies. The following section of the book contains the recipes used in the boards. Recipe ingredients are listed in a bullet-style sidebar. Measurements are in American standard with most metric measures in parentheses (yay!) followed by step by step instructions. Boards using the recipes are listed in the header. The book doesn't include nutritional information. The recipes are pictured with the finished boards and the pictures are beautifully clear and colorful. Many of the recipes do use pre-packaged ingredients and condiments for convenience.

Five stars. The dishes and boards here aren't super *fancy* but they really *feel* special because of the presentation. I liked everything about this book, from the presentations, the clearly written recipes, and the beautiful photography and food styling. This is a very popular instagram/pinterest trend and this book contained a lot of time-saving shortcuts and suggestions. Perfect for holiday entertaining.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.