SWEET RELIEF

Sick of pudding? Wow your friends by stacking a dessert platter with chocolate, strawberries, marshmallows, biscuits, and, yes, ice cream if you’d like.

There’s no pleasing everyone when it comes to dessert. Sweet? Tart? Light and fruity, or all in on the sugar? We’ve all been there at Christmas. There’s a trifle, but Nan also insists on a traditional pud, and the kids want ice cream, resulting in a mish-mash of planning and cleaning.

Enter the dessert platter. Not a new concept but one that’s back in the spotlight as the holidays approach. For the uninitiated, think cheese boards but sweet – chocolate, strawberries, marshmallows, biscuits, and, yes, ice cream if you’d like.

“A dessert platter, minus the ice cream, is set and forget,” says Jayden Vutukuri, the senior research and development manager at Arnott’s NZ’s factory in Avondale, Auckland – which the company opened in June after taking over local biscuit producer 180 Degrees.

“If you’re hosting, you’re not slaving away in the kitchen trying to get the dessert ready, doing those final touches. You’ve already got it out there, it’s ready to go. And conversation will flow around it as everyone is digging in. So it just makes for a more social hosting occasion.”

Dessert platters trended online during Covid lockdowns, with people looking for creative ways to enjoy an indulgent moment at home. They’ve been touted by the likes of Jules Sebastian – wife of pop star Guy Sebastian – who posted on Instagram that she was “back on the plattering bandwagon” and described dessert boards as “super impressive for visitors”.

Vutukuri, who’s always keeping an eye on food trends, first came across them on Pinterest while searching for a cheesecake recipe for his wife’s birthday.

The “explosion online” got the Arnott’s team thinking about what new biscuit products might work in a dessert platter.

“We were looking at lots of different types of textures, not just flavours and formats, and how we can deliver something that’s unique into the market.”

Which is how the limited edition brownie snaps came about. The snaps – a hybrid biscuit/cracker combo – are made using classic brownie flavours, but come out thin and brittle for snapping and dipping. (They’re available in three flavours: cheeky chocolate, choco-latte and almond, and coconut and white choc.)

Unsurprisingly, Vutukuri puts the brownie snaps front and centre as he walks the Sunday Star-Times through building a dessert platter.

“With a cheese board, cheese is usually the hero. With a dessert board, you can kind of have anything as a hero,” he says.

“What we’ve done here is taken brownie snaps and made that the hero, so we’ve got all three flavours. And then building the board around it. So having the fresh fruit, having some dried fruit as well for some different texture, colour, and the softness of the marshmallows, and then filling it all in with chocolate drops.”

Readers may recall that a few weeks ago the instruction for cheese boards was “less is more”; Vutukuri says for dessert platters, the opposite applies.

“More is more! The more you can stack things on top of each other, the better … this is decadence, it’s indulging yourself.

“It’s got more colours, more textures, more flavours [than a cheese board]. It brings freshness with fruit, it can even bring different temperatures, say with ice cream. There’s some that have got hot chocolate fondue as well, so you can go hot as well, depending on the season.”

Vutukuri cautions that ice cream is not quite “set and forget”, and pistachios or almonds are good “if you want the combination of sweet and savoury”.

“Nuts are one of those things that straddle that line really well. We’ve got almonds on top of one of the products as well, so we’re already getting nuts in some way.”

Most of Vutukuri’s dessert board is gluten-free, and he says “you can swap out the elements” for those who want to avoid gluten entirely. “I reckon you’d probably make one gluten-free board and one notgluten-free board, to cater to both, having that variety.”

The board we’re working on today is on the smaller side, and Vutukuri hedges his bets when asked how many it would serve.

“Four people, I think. Maybe a little bit more, depends how hungry they are! Yeah, four to six maybe. Do you think it’s two?”

And, while you want it to look good, remember that ultimately, taste is king: “If it doesn’t taste good, then there’s no point in having it look good.”

There are a range of options if you’re looking to assemble a dessert board. New World has a handy guide for a platter that serves 10 and takes 15 minutes to prepare, with goodies including rum-flavoured Christmas truffles and mini meringues.

If you’re after something with even less effort, The Cake Eating Company sells ready-to-serve dessert platters ranging from $75 for small to $150 for large. Platters include cake sandwich slices, brownies and macarons, and are not suitable for diners who are nut free, vegan or gluten free.

Until now, Vutukuri’s dessert platters have been confined to the research lab – making biscuits is a serious business – but he says he’ll definitely be busting them out over summer.

“I’ve got my parents coming for New Year’s, over from Australia, so we’ll be having a later Christmas,” he says.

“I’ll definitely be making up one of these to try and impress them.”

Jayden Vutukuri’s top tips for creating a dessert platter

1. The WOW factor – include textures, colours and options with a view to excite your guests.

2. Appealing to different tastes – as with every cheese-platter, guests will lean to different tastes and combinations. Feel free to experiment and put a variation on the platter, get a little creative!

3. Leverage fruit – use fresh fruits that are in-season to (a) add a healthy treat (b) add colour and visual interest (c) make it truly about dessert and not just sugar.