The Gorgeous Joanna Gaines Cake Stand That Buyers Are Using To Store Their Cheeses

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The marble cake plate from Joanna Gaines' Hearth and Hand with Magnolia collection (available at Target) can do more than keep your cake protected – repurpose this cake stand to keep your cheese a-chillin', too. Thanks to marble's high heat conductivity rate, it pulls heat off foods (and even your fingers) quickly and efficiently, which is why marble always feels cooler to the touch. It's literally pulling the heat off your fingers. It's also why you feel kind of miserable when you step onto a marble floor after a hot shower. The marble sucks the heat out of your feet, leaving your piggies feeling cold.

Like all things Joanna Gaines, the marble cake plate boasts a stunning design. A beautiful glass dome covers the marble stand, which sits flat on your table or counter. Not only is it useful, but it'll encourage you to start seeing cake stands as decor in their own right. More importantly, because of marble's conductivity abilities, it helps keep cheese at 68 to 72 degrees Fahrenheit — aka room temperature. And it's a good thing, too, because when cheese warms up to room temperature, the fat molecules in the cheese loosen up a bit. Once that happens, the deep umami flavors and delicious scents are set free. Warm cheese is also creamier and softer. This softness turns up the volume on the flavor, which means your taste buds are better able to detect a broader range of flavors. In light of this, it just makes sense to turn the marble cake stand into a cheese holder.

If you're going to stash your cheese in Joanna Gaines' cake stand, you'll want to give it enough time to dip down to room temperature. If you slice it up straight out of the fridge and put it into the cake plate, the cheese will take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour to get to room temperature. The exact time depends on whether it is soft or hard cheese. Additionally, the cover on the Magnolia cheese stand should be fairly air tight, which means you can store the cheese on the counter without worrying about it drying out or attracting pests. 

The U.S. Department of Health safety guidelines suggest that, in general, food should not be left out at room temperature for more than two hours. Otherwise, harmful bacteria can start growing on it, which can lead to food poisoning. You do have some leeway, depending on the types of cheese you have on the marble plate, however. According to the U.S. Dairy, cheeses with lower moisture content, like Cheddar or Parmesan, can last longer out in the open than soft cheeses, like Camembert or Brie, before spoiling sets in.

Although it can be tempting to keep the cheese out on the counter due to marble's conductivity properties, it's best to put it back in the fridge before the two-hour window is up. Food reaches a danger zone when it's between 40 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit. These are temps that encourage the most bacterial growth. At 68 degrees Fahrenheit and 72 degrees Fahrenheit, your room temperature cheese sits right in the middle of this temperature spread. 

There are other items that might also like to shelter under the dome of Joanna Gaines' cake stand. To make this piece a budget-friendly part of your table decor, keep in mind its parameters. The marble plate is 11 inches across, though not all of that will be usable space. The lid takes up some of the space on the outer edges. It also stands 8.5 inches high, so the food you put in it can't be very tall. You may also want to look at things from an aesthetic point of view. That is, you want to put food that looks pretty inside because the plate is meant to show off what's underneath its dome.

Take quiche, for example. Not only can it look stunning, but it's a recipe that actually tastes better if you serve it at room temperature. To be sure that its borders clear the inside edges of the cake plate's dome lid, make it in an 8-inch Winco carbon steel quiche pan because a standard 9-inch quiche pan might put the crust of the quiche too close to the dome. 

Or consider making it a butter board. And unlike cheese, it's safe to leave butter out at room temperature, so making the cake plate the centerpiece of your display is perfectly acceptable. Serve the butter on your marble cake stand. You can sit this on top of a larger wooden cutting board that you decorate with assorted slices of bread and crackers. Just cover the cake plate with the domed lid until party time to keep things fresh.