An Afternoon Grazing Board from the Gourmet Bites Hamper

Six things come out of the box, and four of them are sweet. The crackers and the pita go down the middle of a board with a firm cheese and a bowl of something sharp beside them, and the sweet half arrives in stages: the honey popcorn first, then the cashew brittle, then the shortbread and the truffles with the coffee. That is an afternoon spread for six.

The Gourmet Bites Hamper is one of the smaller boxes we pack, and it is built to be opened in front of people rather than worked through alone at a desk. Everything in it is shelf stable, and it travels as easily to a workplace kitchen as to a lounge room.

What it needs is an order of service, because the two halves are not evenly matched. Tipped onto a bench all at once it reads as six small packets. Given a board, ten minutes and one addition from the shops, it reads as a spread.

The six items, and the job each one does

Everything arrives in the French blue box with the gold ribbon, hand packed in Corio on the northern edge of Geelong. This is what comes out, and where each piece sits.

If you have no tray, turn the hamper lid upside down and line it with baking paper. It is already the right shape, and the board and the box match.

The savoury half is smaller than it looks

Two of the six items are savoury: one 110g box of mini artisan crackers with sea salt and one 100g box of artisan pita with olive oil and sea salt, both oven baked in Australia by Valley Produce Company. That is the entire base of the board, and it empties first, well before anyone has made a dent in the sweet half.

For four people it is plenty. For six it is enough to build a few bites each, and past that a spare box of crackers from the cupboard is the cheapest insurance. A mini cracker is one mouthful rather than three, so the box empties faster than its weight suggests.

Buy one thing, and make it cheese

There is no cheese and no cured meat in this hamper, and that is deliberate. They are the chilled half of a grazing board, and a shelf stable box leaves them out because they want a fridge at both ends of the trip. Jars are the opposite: olives and pickles keep in a cupboard, travel well, and turn up in plenty of our other hampers. One stop at a deli counter is all that stands between this box and a full board.

Make it a firm cheese. It holds its shape on a warm afternoon and cuts into batons that sit on a mini cracker without snapping it, where a ripe brie in December becomes a puddle with a rind around it. Cheddar, gouda and a hard goat all do the job, and our guide to which cracker goes with which cheese has the pairings.

After the cheese, one sharp thing and one fresh thing. A jar of Kangaroo Island kalamata olives drained into a small bowl covers the sharp side, and a bunch of grapes or a handful of cherries covers the fresh one. Three additions, none of them cooked, and the board is finished.

The order it comes out in

The savoury half goes out first and on its own, while people are still standing up. Crackers, pita, cheese, olives, fruit. Give that ten or fifteen minutes before anything sweet appears, or the sweet end gets picked at and the cheese gets ignored.

The honey coated popcorn comes next, and it is the pivot. Coated in Ligurian honey from Kangaroo Island, it is sweet enough to signal the change of direction and salty enough that nobody feels dessert has started. At 80g it fills one bowl generously and two thinly, so use one, and open it when you want it eaten: coated popcorn loses its snap in a humid room faster than anything else in the box.

The caramelised cashew brittle follows it. Tip the pieces into something shallow rather than serving them out of the box, since brittle at the bottom of a deep bowl does not get eaten. If nuts are an issue at your table, keep that dish on its own plate at one end, and the packs carry the allergen statements.

Shortbread and cocoa dusted Belgian truffles come last, with tea or coffee. Leave the truffle box shut until then: they are the first thing in the hamper to suffer in a warm room, and ten minutes in the fridge before they go out is worth more than any arrangement on the plate.

For a crowd rather than a table of six, building a Christmas grazing table that survives the heat has the quantities.

If you are sending it rather than serving it

Nothing in this box needs a fridge, a corkscrew or a cook, which is most of the reason it lands well at an address you have never seen. There is no bottle in it either, so it is a straightforward send to a workplace, a household that does not drink, or a residential care address.

Every hamper travels in an insulated shipper with a free personalised gift card you write at checkout. Orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day from our Corio, VIC warehouse, tracked with Australia Post. If a component is out of stock when we pack, it is substituted for something of equal or higher value, so the box that arrives may differ from the list above by one item.

Questions about serving the Gourmet Bites Hamper

How many people does the Gourmet Bites Hamper serve?

Six as an afternoon board with one cheese added, or four comfortably on what is in the box alone. As a gift for one household it behaves more like a stocked cupboard than a single sitting: the shortbread, brittle and truffles all keep once the savoury half has gone.

What should I add to the Gourmet Bites Hamper?

One firm cheese, one jar of olives and something fresh. That is the shortest list that turns it into a board. For six or more, add a second box of crackers, because the savoury half is what runs out.

Does anything in the Gourmet Bites Hamper need refrigerating?

No. All six items are shelf stable and the box can sit in a cupboard until you want it. The truffles are the only thing worth chilling, and only for ten minutes before serving on a warm day. That is about texture rather than safety.

The Gourmet Bites Hamper sits in our non-alcoholic hampers range, alongside the rest of the Christmas hampers. Order it a few days before you need it, buy the cheese on the morning, and give yourself ten minutes with a board.