Whats a ballotin?
This is the box a box of pralines comes in. Nice ballotins are deep and have big flaps on them. • What is a chocolatier? I guess it’s someone who makes chocolates. • What distinguishes gourmet pralines from regular chocolates? Taste and price (better and higher). And oh, I guess also nutritional impact (which is bad bad bad). Ah, the benefits of cream and butter; Gregg Easterbrook calls Belgian pralines “depth charges.” • What goes into good chocolate? As a general rule of thumb, good chocolate should have a high percentage of cocoa. Chantal Coady feels 55-75% to be a good number. Of this, some 30% should be cocoa butter. Most of the remaining 25% or so of the bar consists of sugar. The cocoa content of lower quality chocolate will be “cut” with extra sugar, and cocoa solids will be replaced with other milk solids and vegetable fats. When looking for good chocolate, Coady recommends to start first with dark chocolate. Of these, she ranks Valrhona’s Grand Cru as among the best. With reg
