Fall Cherry, Fennel & Fig Butter Board

This Fall Cherry, Fennel & Fig Butter Board is what you should serve at your next gathering or get-together this fall. Rich creamy butter topped with fresh figs, walnuts, toasted fennel seeds, flakey salt, and dollops of Cherry Fennel Sherry jam all melt dreamily onto warm crusty bread. Easy to prepare and ready in an instant, it would be a great addition to the Thanksgiving spread.

What is a Butter Board?

A butter board is an ingenious and easy idea to serve guests. An alternative to a cheese board or charcuterie board, it is at it’s simplest, a board artfully smeared with softened butter and topped with an assortment of ingredients. This beautiful display is then dipped into with chunks of warm crusty bread or crackers.

The concept for the butter board recently became a TikTok and Instagram trend with a video shared by Justine Doiron of @justine_snacks. However, she credits the idea to Joshua McFadden—coauthor of the 2017 cookbook Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables for first coming up with the idea.

The butter board concept has taken off, and understandably s0. It is easy to make, very versatile, feeds a crowd, and is relatively inexpensive to put together as compared to its cheese and charcuterie counterparts. And there are so many ways to run with it – seasonally, savory, sweet, by region…

What are the main ingredients?

It is the namesake for this dish that is the star of the show. Butter takes the lead in this “recipe.” I put recipe in quotes because it is more of a loose guide than an iron-clad formula. The beauty of the butter board is that it is open to invention and whims… add some of this, more of that, sprinkle, dollop, repeat. I took this as an opportunity to play with a new jam in my store and hands down one of my favorite flavors – the Cherry Fennel Sherry Jam.

But the most important thing is the butter. As with all simple recipes with few ingredients, you want to source the best ingredients that you can find. So you want to find a great quality butter to make this shine.

What is the best type of butter to use in a Butter Board?

For this recipe, I used a cultured butter from Vermont Creamery – a favorite for its flavor and style.

This summer I had the pleasure of attending the Vermont Cheese Summit – a cheese industry event which brought Vermont cheesemakers, the Vermont cheese council, and industry members together for discussions, presentations, and tastings. The event focused on the beauty, breadth, and strength of Vermont’s artisanal cheesemakers and on their future. I could not help but be profoundly impressed by the vision of Adeline Druart, the president of Vermont Creamery and a leader in this space. Their cheese and dairy products are some of my favorites, and I am lucky to call them local.

Cultured butter is made from fresh, pasteurized cream but differs from regular sweet cream butter by the addition of a fermentation process. After the cream is pasteurized, live cultures are added to it – similar to in yogurt-making. The cream then rests and thickens while developing rich and tangy flavor notes, like buttermilk and hazelnuts. Cultured butter has a higher fat content of 82%, similar to the standards for European butter.

For a butter board I would suggest using a high quality cultured butter, a European butter, or any local artisanal butter you can find.

If you make this Fall Cherry, Fennel & Fig Butter Board be sure to leave a comment below. I’d love to hear from you. And if you do make this recipe, don’t forget to tag me on Instagram, I’d love to see!

How To Make: Fall Cherry, Fennel & Fig Butter Board