How to choose your Wedding Cheese

There's a lot to think about when feeding a crowd for any occasion.  Here we look at quantities and selection to ensure your big day or party goes off without a cheese hitch!

The Numbers!  How much do I need?

The first thing to consider when buying a cheese wedding cake or grazing board for any gathering is how much cheese you're going to need to keep your guests well fed!  This is a bit of an inexact science although, as we've been doing it for many years, our advice is pretty accurate.

For a gathering we recommend 50g - 100g per person, depending if the cheese is to be eaten straight after the meal or later in the evening and with other food or by itself.   Our amounts do allow for some people not having any cheese, and some people having a bit more, so don't reduce your numbers and then go by the below - it should be for all guests you're expecting for an accurate amount.

We find that 75g per person is about right for an evening do if the cheese is the main thing - so the maths is 0.075 x number of people attending = amount of cheese in kg.

We would go for 50g per person if there's other food available alongside as a buffet or the cheese is for after dinner, so again, the maths is:  0.050 x number of people attending = amount of cheese in kg.

We would go up to 100g per person if you know your guests are really cheese lovers or you've got half a rugby team coming or you don't mind there being a few leftovers - again the maths:  0.1 x number of people attending = amount of cheese in kg.

Of course some people just want to go for the look of a spectacular cake and are happy to have leftovers to eat the next day or send off with their guests, so if that's the case, just carry on and go for the look, but at least by looking at the numbers, you'll have an idea where you need to head quantity wise.

The Cheese - what should I have?

So this is definitely the big question!  Traditionally for an English cheeseboard, you would have a blue, a brie, a cheddar, and then one or two other types of cheese to your preference.  This is a pretty good theory to go on for a cheese wedding cake too.

The big question is what do you like?  All of our cakes available in the online shop are designed to be a wonderful selection that work both really well as a cake, and as a selection of cheese in their own right.

Being slightly different they play to different tastes, for instance, Evie and Annie have no, or just a small amount of blue if you're not so keen on that.  The party cake and Jessica have more brie than some of the others..  We will guarantee that all of them are a great selection and very well thought out to be delicious with different 'other' cheeses, like wensleydale and cranberry, or a smoked cheese, or a lovely red cheese as another option.

So have a browse, check out some of the smaller ones too, as cakes like Annie, Ronnie, Rachel, Party, Louise and more have options to make them bigger so do take the time to go in and have a look at the options if you like the cheeses.

What if I want a totally different selection of cheese?

We often have couples coming to us with a list of cheeses that they want to put into a cheese wedding cake.  While this is fine, we are of course limited by how big the cheeses are made, so sometimes things just don't work to stack up.  This however is when our expertise really comes into play because we can recommend similar substitutions, or find work arounds -  we've cut many a 500g disk of Old Amsterdam and Comte to fit these massive cheeses into a smaller cake.  Some cheeses come in multiple sizes so we can advise on how to best fit together your selection.  We always end up working it out so you're really happy with your selection for your big day!

Often people will just tweak one of our existing cakes, so just substituting a cheese or two to get their perfect selection.  Again this depends on size, but we can work it out for you and find a solution you can be really happy with.

The very best way to do it is to come in for a cheese tasting and select the cheeses while you taste and we can get it all stacked up to see how it looks, just drop us a line at info@mousetrapcheese.co.uk to book an appointment!