A gift box of twelve chocolate pralines with a peanut cream centre, from Bett'r — organic, vegan and gluten-free.
What a praline actually is, since the word means three different things. In Belgium, a praline is a filled chocolate — a shell with a soft centre, which is what these are, and what the word means across most of Europe. In France, praline is a caramelised almond, and praliné ground into a paste is what fills a great many chocolates. In the United States, a praline is a soft pecan and cream sweet from Louisiana. Three entirely different confections sharing one name, all descended from the seventeenth-century French Maréchal du Plessis-Praslin, whose cook is credited with the original almond version.
Vegan, and that is the difficult part. A filled praline normally depends on dairy: milk chocolate for the shell, and cream or butter in the ganache to give the centre its softness and its melt. Removing both without ending up with something waxy or grainy is a genuine formulation problem, and it is why good vegan filled chocolates are far rarer than good vegan bars. Bett'r solve the shell with coconut cream in place of milk powder, and the centre with peanut, which brings its own fat and its own body.
Peanut is a legume, not a nut — closer to peas and beans than to almonds, and grown underground. That legume chemistry is why roasted peanut tastes savoury and salty in a way tree nuts do not, and why it works so well against sweetness rather than disappearing into it. It also means peanut allergy is a separate allergy from tree-nut allergy, common, and potentially severe.
As a gift, twelve pralines in a box is one of the few presents that suits almost anyone, and one that solves a specific problem: a vegan and gluten-free box of chocolates that does not announce itself as a compromise.
Allergen: peanuts. Made alongside other nuts — check the pack. Store cool and dry, below about 20 °C.
Available at Só Verde, an organic concept store in Foz, Porto.