Christmas chocolates

Christmas pralines by Michel Cluizel in twenty varieties

Christmas pralines by Michel Cluizel is a flat box of twenty French chocolates made from milk and dark chocolate, filled with ganache, praliné, and nougatine. The box belongs to the limited Royaume du Solstice collection and comes with a gift bag.

Christmas pralines are the smaller of the two boxes of chocolates that Michel Cluizel has filled for the winter of 2026: 195 grams, twenty pieces, in festive printed cardboard. On the lid, a white stag moves along a frozen lake; above him is the crescent moon, as slender as a sickle in the green polar lights.

Milk and dark chocolate, different piece by piece

The Christmas pralines by Michel Cluizel lie before you in three rows, and it is clear at a glance that here, twenty different recipes sit side by side rather than one variety in many iterations.

Some are square and smoothly coated, others ribbed, still others wrapped in gold or silver foil, and one bears the embossed symbol of the house. Beneath the shells, delicate ganaches alternate with crunchy nougatines and creamy pralinés. Almond and hazelnut provide the base note, candied lemon cubes add a bright counterpoint, and hints of cinnamon and ginger linger in the background.

The box that stays on the table

After dinner, it is brought to the center, the lid is set aside, and then everyone takes turns, comparing and choosing the next one.

The quantity is enough for a group of four or five people without anyone needing to count. If you give them as a gift, you do not need to explain anything: the box is already festively printed, and the gift bag is included. For an espresso after dinner, the dark ones are chosen first, while the light ones are saved for later. And when only three are left at the end, that is the moment that reveals who has truly good manners.

A wafer leaf beneath the nougatine

In the list of ingredients, between almond and hazelnut, there is an inconspicuous word that makes all the difference: wafer.

This refers to the paper-thin, rolled crêpe dentelle from Brittany, which is added in shards to the nougatine to give it the crunch that usually only freshly burnt sugar provides. Because it consists of wheat flour, butter, and barley malt and absorbs moisture immediately, it must be folded in at the last moment and the praline coated right away. This very time pressure is the reason why such fillings are rare in the industry.

The stag of the night, guardian of the stars

Royaume du Solstice is the name of the 2026 Christmas collection, the Kingdom of the Solstice, and Michel Cluizel has given each product within it its own character.

On this box, the white stag takes center stage.

He is the guardian of the stars, whose hooves awaken forgotten paths—or so the house tells it. Around him lies a winter landscape of black firs and blue ice; a swan glides over the lake, two foxes trot through the snow, and on the mountainside, the entrance to the sacred cave glows warmly from the rock. A red-feathered cardinal provides the only bold splash of color in this blue. The larger box in the collection shows the same animals again, but at their destination.