Christmas chocolates with mendiants

Christmas Chocolates with Mendiants by Michel Cluizel

Christmas Chocolates with Mendiants by Michel Cluizel is a box containing thirty-three French chocolates and a separate compartment full of mendiants, topped with pistachio, almond, and candied fruit. It is a limited edition and comes with its own gift bag.

Christmas Chocolates with Mendiants is the 335-gram gift box from Michel Cluizel’s Royaume du Solstice collection, divided into two compartments: on the left, six mendiants, and on the right, thirty-three milk and dark chocolates. On the lid, the entire forest community gathers before a ray of light breaking through an ice cave.

Two compartments, two types of chocolate

These Christmas chocolates from Michel Cluizel can do something the small box cannot: they place two styles side by side, the flat medallion and the filled chocolate.

On the left lie six medallions of dark and milk chocolate, each topped differently with chopped pistachio, roasted almond, and pieces of candied fruit that still have a bit of a crunch. On the right, the chocolates are stacked in five rows: square, ribbed, wavy, and in gold and blue foil. Tucked in between are round ganaches with their cocoa percentage embossed on them. Honey and candied orange peel are added here, which are not found in the small box.

For the party that gets bigger than planned

Thirty-three chocolates and six mendiants are the amount you need to get through an evening where more people arrive than announced.

Between the flat medallions with their whole nuts and the soft fillings beside them lies a whole range of textures. The dark ones go well with coffee, the ganaches with a glass of port wine, and the milk chocolates are left for late in the evening. When you give this gift box, you are gifting a whole round table of treats.

Named after the four mendicant orders

The name of the flat medallions comes from medieval France, where their four toppings represented the habits of the mendicant orders.

Almond, hazelnut, fig, and raisin represented the colors of these religious habits. Sources vary on which fruit stood for which order. Michel Cluizel sticks to the form but swaps the toppings for pistachio and candied fruit. The method remains the same as ever: the nut must be placed into the still-liquid chocolate before it sets, which is why no two medallions look alike.

When the light rises in the ice cave

No other design in the 2026 Christmas collection features as many animals together as this box, and there is a reason for that.

It tells the story of the moment the forest's guardian spirits reach their destination: wolves, the white stag, a doe, foxes, a swan, an owl, squirrels, and a hare gaze together into a warm light breaking through the center of the blue ice. On the longest night of the year, the light is reborn—this is the solstice, which gives the collection its name: Royaume du Solstice, the Kingdom of the Solstice. Anyone who places both of Cluizel’s Christmas boxes side by side will see the same story twice, once on the journey and once at the destination.