L’amuse Signature Aged Gouda Cheese with Spanish Chocolate Dipped Figs

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L’amuse Signature Aged Gouda Cheese

Spanish Chocolate Dipped Figs

L’amuse Signature Aged Gouda Cheese

While Gouda is made everywhere in Holland, there are major differences between goudas from different regions. These wheels are made in the north from milk of Holstein cows, two factors that give the cheese a distinctive creaminess speckled with big, crunchy flavor crystals. Selected for us by Betty Koster of L’amuse, Amsterdam’s top cheese shop, this cheese is aged for over two years. The flavor is correspondingly intense. It fills your mouth with butterscotch and caramel, almost like a dessert.

An illustration of an unwrapped chocolate covered fig in front of a gold foil wrapped chocolate covered fig.

Spanish Chocolate Dipped Figs

The rabitos fig bonbons are made by second-generation, family run La Higuera in Almoharín, Spain. Using the original family recipe, they puncture the bottom of each tree-dried fig and fill it to bursting with a boozy chocolate ganache spiked with a heady dose of brandy. Then they enrobe the figs in a silky-smooth layer of chocolate. One rabito is the size of a large chocolate truffle. You could eat it in two or three nibbles or devour it all in one bite.

These two together make for a luscious, flavorful treat.

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