Hi, happy holidays. I am Marie Guaragna with MGB special events in Arlington, Virginia. Today, I am showing you how to make some quick and easy holiday appetizers for your next holiday party. Today, I am going to show you how to make a warm raspberry brie that s sure to please all of your guests and here is what we need to get started.

We need some fresh raspberries, some toasted pine nuts, some raspberry jam and a wheel of your favorite brie. The tools we will need just a very pretty cake plate or whatever kind of platter that you might have around, we will need a serrated knife and then we will need a wonderful little holiday spreader. I like to use the serrated knife to cut the brie and that s all we need to get started.

So, here we go. Alright, I am going to use my serrated knife and take my wheel of brie. I guess this is would be a medium sized brie. They have them smaller and then they have them larger. I like to use the smaller ones because then I can make more than one timed. Because it s for holidays I am going to go ahead and do the raspberry because of the colors. I mean it just tastes so wonderful and it s very easy. So, I am just going to take my serrated knife and very gently and evenly cut the brie right in half. Try to make it as even as possible so that it will lay right when we are going to put all of our ingredients on there and there we go two half s. So, then you take your favorite cake platter or any kind of platter that you have for your holiday. I like to use it because it s nice and raised. It gives different dimensions to the different items that are on your buffet table or any kind of table that you are using.

So, I am going to take one of my halves and this is so simple and I am going to go ahead. I can just use my serrated knife and I am going to take my raspberry jam and I am going to put maybe a quarter of this and I am going to put it right there, spread it nice and even on my brie and you can use any jam for this. This is one of my signature appetizers for my company and a lot of times I use apricot and then I will add dates and chopped cherries or just whatever you have in your pantry. It doesn t really matter. Now, I am going to go ahead and incorporate some of these wonderful fresh raspberries that I have. Now, I am not going to use my better looking ones. I am going to go ahead and use, you know when you buy these packages some of them are more smudged than others. Of course, they are still good but they don t look as nice. So, I am going to go ahead and put a couple of those in the middle just see which ones may not be as nice as the other ones but this happens to be a really good batch so, it s kind of hard to find bad ones that don t look that pretty. You could spread it out evenly. Just go ahead and I will put that one there. That s enough. Then I like to use toasted pine nuts. You don t have to toast them but when you toast them it totally brings out the nuttiness and the oils from the pine nuts and at a time we say pinoles, the pinoles are so wonderful. So, no measurements just going to sprinkle them on and already you can see what the top is going to look like, alright. Put this on and then we are going to take the other half. Lift just spread it right like that, easy and we are going to repeat the process, so simple. Just get it all along there and spread it and just the red with the white, oh, it is so festive for the holidays. Of course, you can do this all year around but this is just especially nice because of the coloring. Get a little bit more on there and you can start out with it nice and even and then of course, once we are going to warm this very quickly. If it falls on the sides it s not a problem. Repeat the process. Get some of your really nice raspberries and just put them on there. This actually almost looks like a dessert and you could serve this after dinner with some nice dessert wine or whatever or you could do it as an appetizer, it doesn t matter. You can just have it anytime you want, it s so good. Alright, I think that s enough.

Then what you can do is just put them all around the plate, make it look nice and festive, the poppies are right there. There you go and top it off with some more pine nuts, love them. This particular dish has little holes in them so they are falling through but that s fine. You can put as many as you want on there and then of course, we will have some on the sides just to make it look festive.

Now, how easy is that? People are going to think you slaved all afternoon for this. Now, the beauty of this dish is that you don t have to bake it. All you have to do is microwave it and we are just going to on our microwave just for maybe a minute, maybe a minute and 30 just depends. Everyone s microwave is different, the strains and what have you but we are going to go ahead and pop it in the microwave. We don t want it to get real mushy. We want it to stay still firm but yet soft on the insides. So, come on let s put it in our microwave. Alright, here we go. Now, I have to point out that you need to make sure that your wonderful festive dish is going to fit in the microwave before you do this. Alright, so we are going to start out with just 45 seconds just to see make sure it's going to be not overdone. Well, let s try 45 and we will see what happens. Let s see if it s ready.

Oh, yeah. Isn t that lovely? Now, because it s Christmas you can always garnish this with a little sprig of mint and there you have a warm raspberry brie for this wonderful holiday occasion that s sure to be a crowd pleaser. So, enjoy and happy holidays.