Because chocolate mendiants are an excellent gastronomic gift to offer during the holidays, we asked François, from Chocolats Privilège, to give us a few tips on making these little sugary treats.

The choice of chocolate: François recommends using chocolate chips for whatever mendiant recipe that you follow. Try your favourite kind of chocolate: dark, white or milk—they’ll all work!

Professional tip: No matter how much chocolate you want to melt, start by melting two thirds of that quantity in a double boiler or a microwave, and then add the last third to the melted and still hot chocolate. The ideal temperature, after adding the solid chocolate to the melted chocolate, is 30°C. On a parchment paper-covered cookie sheet, drop approximately 1 tablespoon of melted chocolate to form small disks.

Decorating tip: once the disk is formed, decorate them with your choice of dried cranberries, orange zest, grated coconut, chocolate pearls and nuts (hazelnuts, pistachios, almonds, chopped pecans). Let the disks cool down at room temperature for about one hour.

Decorating mendiants is a great activity for the entire family, so get creative and have fun!

The real difficulty in the art of making chocolate mendiants is that of trying not to eat them all before offering them as gifts!