If you’re planning a Valentine’s Day dinner party, consider a dessert board for an after-dinner treat.  Dessert boards offer guests a variety of sweets to choose from, add visual appeal to your party, and can be easy to arrange.  The majority of the work goes into planning what you’ll buy, and I’m here to help!

Dessert Board Ingredients

The ingredients for your dessert board can range from healthy to indulgent.  If you’re going for a healthier version, you may want to focus on fruits, nuts and dark chocolate.  That said, here are just a few goodies you can add to your board:

Fruit & nuts:

• Berries

• Fruit kebabs

• Trail mix, like this chocolate cherry version

• Dried fruit

Chocolate:

• Chocolate-covered fruit or nuts

• Chocolate-dipped marshmallows

• Stone-ground Mexican chocolate, like Taza

• Trader Joe’s Chocolate Wedges

• Toblerone wedges

Baked goods:

• Cookies

• Brownie bites

• Mini cupcakes

Dips:

• Caramel dipping sauce

• Cannoli dip (not my recipe, but delicious)

• Marshmallow fruit dip (also not my recipe)

• Melted chocolate (I prefer melting high-quality chocolate over some of the cheaper “melting chocolate” you’ll find in the baking aisle)

Other:

• Gummy candies, like these lower-sugar SmartSweets Sweet Fish

• Candy hearts

• Pretzels or popcorn, to balance the sweetness

Assembling your board

For aesthetic appeal, choose desserts that match the palette of your dinner party theme.  For my Valentine’s Day dessert board, I stuck with red fruits and low-sugar red gummies, with white and chocolate accents.  Similarly, when I compiled a dessert board for last Fourth of July, I stuck to reds, whites and blues.  A dessert board looks better when the color palette is cohesive.  

The board itself is also part of the visual appeal, so you’ll want a lovely wooden cutting board, slate serving board, or something equally pretty.  Consider the look of the bowls and any other containers or utensils you use to arrange and serve the food.

You might consider adding different “levels” and focal points.  Some desserts will lie flat on your board.  Others may be in small bowls.  You may choose to have a larger bowl or tray in the middle to act as your centerpiece–it might contain a dipping sauce for the rest of the ingredients, or particularly vibrant berries.  Desserts on a few different planes will add more visual interest.

Finally, as with anything you organize, it’s generally easiest to add your largest items to the board first, and fill in the gaps with smaller items.  Arranging your larger desserts in a balanced way will help the whole board appear balanced.

Good luck assembling your Valentine’s Day dessert board, and let me know how they turn out in the comments!