A friend of mine brought these back from Ireland recently. The bars were costing approximately 1.50 Euros each, quite expensive considering the present exchange rate. They are neatly packaged and indeed do project the appearance of a luxury chocolate, although I don't regard them as such. They are not so easy to find in the Britain but I believe Waitrose have been known to sell them on occasion.

Butlers' Milk Chocolate Hazelnut Praline Bar is a chunky 75g milk chocolate bar. There are six chunks to each bar and inside each one, surrounded by smooth soft praline, is a whole crunchy hazelnut. The hazelnut praline centre is a mixture of powdered nuts and chocolate. Generally speaking Praline is made from ground up sugar coated nuts that have been mixed with chocolate to form a paste. Praline filled chocolates have become popular in recent years. Thornton's do a lot of them.

Personally I don't like this creamy mush very much. I'd rather just have plain chocolate. Of course I ate a whole bar just to test it and I can imagine some will be more than satisfied with this smooth sweet but not so chocolaty confectionary. For me though it was a little to sweet and it would have been quite sickly if it were not for the crunchy hazelnut in each block.

Another thing I don't like about these bars is that they contain vanillin. This is an organic compound extracted from the vanilla bean. However, synthetic vanillin, instead of natural vanilla extract, is sometimes used as a flavouring agent in foods, beverages, and pharmaceuticals. There is no indication hat type of vanillin exists in this bar. A lot of the dark chocolates in Aldi contain his substance. I try to avoid chocolate containing vanillin.

Other Ingredients:
Milk chocolate (sugar, full cream milk powder, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, emulsifier: soya lecithin, flavour: vanillin), hazelnut paste, plain chocolate (cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, emulsifier: soya lecithin, flavour: vanillin), hazelnuts, butter oil.