Pralines – made by Hallingers

There is an ever increasing list of pralines manufacturers in West Europe who will send you their pralines of your choice right to your doorstep. They come in wooden boxes, golden paper or in brand unique wrapping styles. Take for instance Hallingers Pralines, made in Landsberg am Lech, some sixty kilometres west of Munich. Interestingly and despite its nationwide customer base Hallinger only has three branches, and they are all located in the very south of the country. In addition to their high quality pralines the company also produces tea, coffee and of course chocolate bars and chocolate tablets all under the Hallingers brand.

Their finest gourmet plates are freshly made by hand daily from the chocolate factory. Only the finest raw materials are used, free of preservatives. Also worth noting that Hallingers packaging designs have won international awards, including Red Dot Design Award 2013 and German Design Award Special Mention 2014.

What many airlines have already established is yet a new/nearly unknown thing in the world of pralines: airmiles / pralines points. Hallingers offers its clients three categories:

Hallingers platin: from purchases of at least750 euro/year. 15% discount on each item.

Hallingers pink: from purchases of at least 350 euro/year. 10% discount on each item.

Hallingers green: from purchases of at least 150 euro/year. 5% discount on each item.

The company says their employees are driven by seven metrix that motivate them to produce high quality chocolates. These are passion, a sense for quality, creativity, positive thinking, thirst for knowledge, responsibility and last but not least walking the extra mile.

Interesting also to mention that many of their distinguished table chocolates come in 90g packaging, and not the usual 80g or 100g. Currently the couple Patrick and Karin Hallinger, who are both co-founders offer around eight hundred different high quality chocolate products, sixty tea products and coffee from more than ten countries. Their prime market is Germany but expansion into USA, Japan, UK and Dubai is already in the pipeline for the very near future.

Vegan chocolate

Two of the latest (and perhaps long lasting) trends in the chocolate,- and even generally in the food industry are raw and vegan chocolate. In this blog I try to give some overview of vegan chocolate. Chocolate, or its origin, the cocoa bean comes from a plant, making it vegan in the first place. However in the process of going from the tree through the refinery, all the way to the end consumer, a variety of ingredients are added, such as for instance sugar and milk. A good quality chocolate, generally speaking has a higher chocolate content, pure ingredients, and no additives. The ingredients will be simple: cocoa, cocoa butter, sugar, and occasionally lecithin, or as a taste refiner a certain amount of vanilla.

Quite often in literature we find that dark chocolate is put forward as recommendations for people looking for vegan chocolate. But we must remember that many dark chocolates (dark chocolate being a chocolate with a lesser amount of milk in it than say milk chocolate) also can contain milk. Ideally any trully dark chocolate should contain only the following: cocoa butter, cocoa powder, vanilla and perhaps lecithine. In Europe for instance if any chocolate producer wants to sell their chocolate as dark chocolate, the chocolate needs to have a minimum of 43% cocoa. In the US the required minimum is 35%.

It is remarkable that many supermarket chains and discounters are also offering vegan chocolate by now. Consumers however should keep in mind that vegan chocolate is not necessarily “more healthy” than non vegan. Vegan chocolate for example might still contain a high percantage of sugar. Sometimes you might see a ‘may contain milk’ warning, which can be confusing. This is simply due to the fact that the product is actually being made on the same line as dairy products. The fact is that vegan chocolate is becoming an increasingly global trend and recently Dubai based brands Caho chocolate and Mirzam Chocolate also started to offer their own vegan chocolate bars.

 

 

Camondas chocolate shop Dresden

A very pleasant chocolate experience yesterday at Camondas in Dresden, a city often called Germany’s Florence. Camondas offer a great mix of the worlds finest and exclusive chocolate bars, including the pictured 75% chocolate made of Criollo cocoa from Indonesia’s Java island, produced by Pralus. We usually associate Criollo cocoa, which is said to have the highest quality of all three cocoa types, and is also much more rare than the other two (Trinitario and Forastero) with South America, especially Ecuador and Venezuela rather than South East Asia but an effort has recently been made to grow its presence elsewhere.

At Camondas you can specify which taste category you would like to experience, such as for instance pure, fruity, flowerly, salty, spicy and many more. If you are looking for a rare exotic type of chocolate, its quite likely that you may find it here. The products of more than twenty five well known exclusive chocolate brands are displayed in the shop and are ready to be purchased. Additionally you will also find some new quality brands from “non-typical” chocolate countries such as Lithuania but also emerging bean to bar producers from cocoa growing countries such as Madagascar for instance.

A few times each month the shop also offers tasting hours and seminars for which you can register online. So if you want to learn about chocolate and you want to discover that the world of chocolate is so much more than any mass industrial product offered by some discounters then this is the right place to visit. And of course you will not only find 100g or 80g chocolate bars and tablets but also high quality pralines, nougat and honey sweet products. Great to see such shop, where you can immediately sense the love and passion for quality and delightful chocolate as soon as you enter it.

 

Choco Story Prague

Should you ever have the opportunity to visit Prague, the golden capital of Czech Republic, be sure not to miss the Chocomuseum Choco Story in downtown Prague. This year Choco Story celebrates its tenth anniversary and it’s all worth a visit. Stretched over two floors Choco Story gives not only an excellent overview about the history of chocolate, about present and past (and long forgotten) chocolate brands but also offers the visitor the opportunity to attend a live demonstration of how chocolate is made. Did you know that Iraq and Bangladesh for instance have had their own chocolate brands in the past? In Choco Story you can find out more about it.

It is always useful to remind ourselves that chocolate isn’t necessarily the same as chocolate. Quality and price differ and so can for instance also the type of cacao chosen. Prague chocolate museum through its exhibition explains very nicely the various steps from bean to bar and also introduces us to the historical origins of chocolate several centuries ago in what is nowadays Mexico.

It is one of not that many chocolate museums in Europe (other cities with a chocolate museum are for instance Cologne and Hamburg in Germany but also Brugge in Belgium) and was founded in 2008.

At the end of your tour you also have the opportunity to purchase a chocolate brand (or more) of your choice and many visitors will be interested to learn that over the last years Czech Republic has come up with some local new chocolate brands such as for instance Steiner & Kovarik or Chocoland to name only two. A nice anecdote when we arrived at Prague airport and asked the taxi driver to bring us to Choco story , he himself wasn’t aware that there is such place for chocolate lovers in his own city and after he asked us more details he decided that he will pay it a visit too soon.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey make the way seem shorter.