Almond French Praline Crunch Bar (3 bars)

Every September, as the summer winds down, we pause to make something for the pure joy of it. This year we chose to expand our praline line by adding to our best selling Peanut Butterflies and Gianduja Blocks.

Fresh nuts are carefully roasted with sugar in a copper pot, a French technique that perfectly roasts and coats each nut in caramel. Once cooled, the nuts are ground into a smooth paste, and chocolate is folded in.

What comes out is not sweet the way a candied nut is sweet. The caramel goes dark and toasty, the roast comes forward instead of hiding behind sugar, and the chocolate holds the whole thing together.

This has been one of my favorite techniques for as long as I have been making confections, and I do not think nearly enough people in this country have tasted just how amazing it can be. Part of that is the word itself, which does a lot of work depending on who is holding it.

If you grew up in the American South, a praline is a soft pecan patty and you probably say PRAH-leen and have opinions about people who say PRAY-leen. In Belgium, a praline is any filled chocolate. What I am talking about is the French one, praliné, and it is not a candy at all. It is a technique.

Almond. Interestingly, this is the only one of the four with bittersweet chocolate mixed into the praline itself, rather than dark milk. Against the warm flavor of the almonds it makes a real difference, and the result is something special.

A 65% bittersweet chocolate shell, with a little organic crisped brown rice folded in for texture (that is the crunch in the name). 6.4 oz per bar, made by hand here in San Francisco.

This is a set of three Almond bars. If you would rather taste the technique across all four nuts, the French Praline Crunch Collection has one of each.

Enjoy,
Chuck

Set of Three Bars Total Net Weight: 19.2 oz. (540 g)

Almond Praline Crunch Bar
Ingredients: Bittersweet chocolate 65% cacao (cacao beans, cane sugar, cocoa butter, sunflower lecithin, vanilla beans), almonds, cane sugar, organic crispy brown rice cereal (organic brown rice, organic brown rice syrup, salt), cocoa butter, salt, vanilla beans, cocoa butter and natural colorants.
Contains: Tree nuts (almonds).
Net Weight: 6.4 oz (180 g)

Manufactured in a facility that also processes products containing tree nuts, peanuts, milk, eggs, soy, wheat and sesame.