President’s Choice Swiss Praline Collection

Posted by in Chocolate Reviews on March 5 2011 | Leave A Comment

I really do try not to be a chocolate snob but sometimes it is hard, and while I’m more than happy to eat an unfeasible number of Flake bars every now and again, I’m getting to the point where it is hard to eat low quality chocolate. And make no mistake, the President’s Choice Swiss Praline Collection uses low quality chocolate.

I’m not a fan of the use of palm oil in chocolate, but sometimes it is more noticeable. In the case of this box, the chocolates feel greasy when you pick them up. Not a positive sign. And as the chocolate melts in your mouth, it becomes even more obvious and not in a good way. Nevertheless, I worked my way through the three different varieties.

The Almond Mousse Praline has a decent almondy flavour, but it struggles against the milk chocolate because of its oily texture and strange aftertaste. It isn’t really light enough to be a mousse either.

The Double Dark Chocolate Praline is good in theory and has the best flavour of the trio because there’s no clash between the two components. It isn’t a very dark chocolate though and lacks the big chocolate taste that its name suggests.

The Stracciatella Praline at least has a bit of texture to it because of the little bits of chocolate nibs mixed into the praline, but it still isn’t very tasty.

It is as simple as this – when the chocolate isn’t very good, it doesn’t matter what might be hidden on the inside because it isn’t going to taste good. And this oily chocolate doesn’t taste good. Definitely my least favourite of this batch of President’s Choice boxed chocolates and one that I can’t recommend at all.

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Comments On This Post

  1. Ashleigh

    As far as I can tell, cocoa butter is a byproduct of making cocoa powder. And plain old chocolate needs a bit of extra cocoa butter. And part of why we have (shudder) white chocolate is that its a means of using up cocoa butter. So what on earth possesses makers to use palm oil instead? Unless I have this all wrong, it just seems to be something that defies reason.

    I’d love to be educated about why this is done… because I just can’t understand it at all.

    • Dom (Chocablog Staff)

      Cocoa butter is more expensive than cocoa powder. It takes more of it to make chocolate (so chocolate makers either have to source more, or get rid of the extra cocoa powder).

      It’s also highly valued in the costmetics industry, who will pay a premium for it. All this pushes the price of cocoa butter up, so some chocolate makers choose to add cheaper vegetable oil (often environmentally destructive palm oil) instead.

      As for that white chocolate, it’s probably mainly sugar and milk powder.

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