Slieve Corragh – Celebration Cheese Cake

Our beautiful Slieve Corragh Celebration Cheese Cake is an absolute beauty. One of our most popular, providing a generous selection which makes a superb cheeseboard!

With four layers combining to make a well balanced and luxurious artisan Irish cheese board – this celebration cheese cake is one of our most popular.

Not only does it work well as a replacement for the traditional cake – it’s also perfectly geared towards being an impressive second cake for your evening event. We love it as a feature on a grazing table. Meaning you don’t have to worry about your night time nibbles getting cold before your guests get hungry. The cheese actually improves in yumminess as the night proceeds – perfect for midnight snacking!

How Many People Does The Slieve Corragh Celebration Cheese Cake Serve?

This beautiful celebration artisan Irish cheese cake is a great size to comfortably serve between 100 – 150 guests. And works well as a cheese course during your wedding meal – or as a wonderful feast for your evening do. Or part of both!

What Does It Look Like?

The cheese is supplied to you as stunningly textured whole rounds. Ready for stacking and decorating on location. The examples you see here have been decorated by a fabulous florist. And your wedding florist will also offer this service – this means you can match you cheese to the other elements of your big day!

We also offer a delivery on day, build and decor service to weddings within 20 miles of our Comber store. We dress the cake with season greenery – which may include white flowers, and fruit. Depending on the time of year and availability. Photographs are available on request. For more details please get in touch.

Tell Me About The Cheese!

We’ve picked four of our favourite, crowd pleasing, cheese’s for the Slieve Beg Celebration Cheese Cake. Providing a balanced cheeseboard – with something for everyone.

Gubbeen Mini

Gubbeen is a semi soft, washed curd, washed rind cheese, made by Giana Ferguson in Cork, Ireland. It is orangey pink in colour and has a somewhat elastic texture. Gubbeen can vary in appearance from very pink and pliable, when it tastes mild and sweet, to a darker grey brown, when it tastes more intense and carries a mushroom flavour. Giana’s husband Tom’s family have farmed at Gubbeen for several generations. Giana came from Spain via France, with a cheesemaking background. She is responsible for the cheeses; he, the milk.

Their herd is a mix of breeds: pure-bred Friesians, Simmenthals, whose milk is also famously used in Emmenthal, Jerseys, Shorthorns and black Kerrys, a rare, local breed. All of these breeds produce quite low volumes of milk with high solids, which is good for cheesemaking.

This is effectively the only cheese produced on Gubbeen Farm which has allowed Giana to focus all her energy on getting it just right. However, they do have a smoked offering which is the same cheese that has been smoked in a traditional cold smoker.

Circular Dimensions: 9cm (W) x 3cm (H)

Creeny

At Corleggy every cheese is made by hand with production not exceeding 10 tonnes per annum between Goats, Sheep & Cows’ milk cheeses. Tom & Silke Cropp collect all their milk from three neighbouring farms using just that morning’s milk for production.

Creeny cheese is a hard sheeps cheese made by Corleggy Cheese in County Cavan. At 2 months this is a mild cheese but as it matures up to 12 months it becomes a very sharp cheese indeed. It is rare as production is limited to 4 months in the year. Of cow, sheep and goat, sheep’s milk is the richest. High butter fat and protein content makes for the rich luxurious taste.

Circular Dimensions: 23cm (W) x 6cm (H)

Knockanore Smoked

Eamonn and Patricia Lonergan have been making their Knockanore smoked cheddar on their farm at Ballyneety, in Waterford since 1987. Eamonn makes a range of vac-aged cheddar type cheeses using raw cow’s milk from his own herd of 120 pedigree Fresians and vegetarian rennet. Currently about half of all the milk produced on the farm is used in cheesemaking.

Knockanore cheddar is made on the farm and selected wheels are then cold oak smoked for ten days using a traditional kiln. The oak used is sourced locally from Lismore. This traditional smoking process results in a cheese with a natural tasting smoke that isn’t overpowering, setting it apart from more common smoked cheeses which frequently use artificial liquid smoke to achieve their smoky flavour.

The wheels are subsequently vac-packed and aged on-site for a minimum of four months. The exterior of the cheese is light mahogany in colour, the paste is semi-firm in texture with a yellow colour. The long smoking process gives Knockanore smoked a full on, meaty flavour that is a real hit with fans of smoked cheese.

Circular Dimensions: 19cm (W) x 8cm (H)

Young Buck

Young Buck cheese is brought to you by our friend and neighbour, Mike’s Fancy Cheese. MFC is proud to be creating a new tradition of raw milk cheese making in Northern Ireland.

The man behind Mike’s Fancy Cheese, Mike Thomson, went from cheese enthusiast at Arcadia Deli in Belfast to cheese making student at the School of Artisan Food, Nottinghamshire. Upon graduating he gained experience from some of the UK leading artisan cheese makers, before going on to be head cheese maker at Sparkenhoe Farm. With the desire to produce his own cheese within Northern Ireland Michael turned to crowdfunding platform, seedrs. Supported by friends and backed by 98 investors, he is now operating out of Newtownards, buying milk from a single herd and is supplying Northern Ireland with its first raw milk cheese: Young Buck.

Young Buck cheese has a delicate tropical and salty flavour with peppery spicing towards the blue end. It is made in the Stilton style, but as a younger version – hence its name. The sublime and wonderfully creamy texture is the result of a highly skilled cheese maker combined with a quality material: raw, unpasteurised cow’s milk. Young Buck cheese has a characteristic knobbly crust with a central, smooth, creamy blue-veined paste which becomes chalkier and slightly crumbly towards the edges. It pairs wonderfully with Port and a spicy Shiraz or some delicious fig chutney. A real favourite with our staff and customers here at Indie HQ.

Cooleeney

Cooleeney is produced on the Maher farm in the heart of Tipperary where the peaty pastures are rich and are surrounded by damp boggy land – an environment which allows the Mahers to produce this soft, ripe, runny camembert style cheese with a delicate mushroomy flavour and pleasing after taste.

Cooleeney is a firm favourite at Indie Fude and every customer likes it at a specific stage of ripeness. A young Cooleeney is firm with a chalky paste and light mushroomy flavour. As it ages the structure starts to break down, the paste starts to ooze and the mouths start to water as a pleasant bitterness develops.

There are countless creative ways to serve your Cooleeney and it all depends on personal preference. A beautiful, runny, ripe wedge will look fantastic at the centre of your cheeseboard, or for a decadent lunch, why not bake it and top with some sweet rhubarb chutney and a fresh, zesty salad.

Circular Dimensions: 28cm (W) x 4cm (H)

What Else Do I Need?

That’s entirely up to you! But we can provide incredible local chutneys, and hand crafted crackers and biscuits to complete the offering if you’d like!