Chocomania

I have a confession to make. I ate chocolate for breakfast. But mind you, it is not the typical Ferrero Rocher.

When I opened the fridge to reach for my daily dose of milk, my eyes nearly popped. Check this out, I did not see nuggets of gold but praline. 30 individually wrapped pieces of Swiss Extra Fine "Pralines" with almond and hazelnuts. Prints on the exquisite box read: Made in Switzerland by Goldkenn.

I am not a chocolate connoisseur but I know it's fine, premium stuff before me! How on earth did they end up in my fridge? For all I care, nobody can resist such a rich delicate confection melting in your mouth. But hey, I did not gobble the 30 pieces alright? Haha...

What is praline? Various online dictionaries define it as a confection made of nut kernels, usually of almonds, roasted in boiling sugar until brown and crisp. But I figured the term is also used frequently and interchangeably with "chocolate".

Some facts here... In Europe, the nut is usually almonds but sometimes hazelnuts. In Louisiana and Texas, USA, pecans are almost always the nut used in pralines.

The French, who coined the name, consider praline to be boiled sugar over whole almonds, but in the rest of the world the almonds are ground and the praline is either a powder or a smooth paste. In Germany and Belgium praline means only a filled chocolate of any sort. In Britain the term can mean either kind of praline. (Source: www.wordiq.com/definition/Praline)