Easy Recipes for Spring

Add elegance to seasonal presentations with decadent soft cheeses. Crafted with extra heavy cream, Schroeder Käse Triple Creme Brie has a lush interior. Display its earthy flavors and bloomy rind with sweet fruits and honey, like on this Brie and Berries Cheese Board. Make memories with BelGioioso's creamy, luxurious burrata or a tart featuring award-winning Crave Brothers Farmstead Classics® Mascarpone. Warmer days also call for flower power: add pops of color with edible favorites or create a box bursting with DIY cheese flowers.

Crumbly cheddars, aged asiagos—flavorful hard cheeses leave an impression. Take Sartori Original BellaVitano®, an Italian-inspired cheese with a crystalline crunch. "It has great depth," shares Master Cheesemaker Ken Kane. "There are elements of parmesan with savory and nutty notes, as well as fruity and tangy elements." The cheese is an ideal foundation for flavors like wine-soaked Merlot or Chardonnay and hand-finished Tomato Basil. Explore Sartori's rainbow of flavors and use them to inspire new dishes like this chicken salad.

Now that soft and hard cheeses are on your entertaining roster, bring it on home with this showstopper, Uplands Pleasant Ridge Reserve. It's the most awarded cheese in American history! Master Cheesemaker Andy Hatch crafts this beauty only in the summer months with raw milk from cows grazing on lush pastures. The sweetness from the grass-fed milk combines with the savory notes developed by the cheese's washed rind. The end result is a complex, one-of-a-kind cheese that’s rich and salty with a long, fruity finish.

When entertaining guests with cheese, how you serve your favorite fromage is almost as important as what you serve. "Cut cheese into bite-size pieces like wedges, sticks and crumbles," advises cheesemonger Erin Carlman Weber. “Don't leave it up to your guests to decide how to cut into that beautiful wedge or wheel." Since sensory qualities differ from the wheel’s center to the rind, cut pieces equally with the same rind-to-paste ratio. Ensure pretty designs by artfully arranging cut cheeses into sunbursts, stacks, rivers and piles.

Are you looking for culinary inspiration? Let Master Cheesemaker Sid Cook's innovative spirit be your muse. "The artisan cheeses that we're doing...we just literally made them up!" Sid says. "My passion is doing things other people aren't doing anywhere in the world." Sid's the mastermind behind 65 Wisconsin Originals and trendy bites like Carr Valley Garlic Bread Cheese®. Turn it into croutons or serve it Sid's way—pressed in a waffle iron and dipped in maple syrup. And if baking, his fontina stirred into a quick bread doesn't disappoint!