French Meringue Filled Snowballs

French Meringue Snowballs, hollow domes generously filled with roasted hazelnut praline, lemon jelly, vanilla cream and candied chestnut. Individual desserts, easy to prepare in advance for your holiday menu.

Advance Prep Holiday Dessert

This is an ideal holiday dessert to make in advance, as the meringue dome shells freeze well - as well as the lemon jelly, stored directly in their moulds. 

I suggest making the whole assembled dessert on the day of serving. However, the individual steps of praline, meringue balls and lemon jelly can all be done up to a month in advance.

As the French meringues are fragile, store them carefully in an airtight container and on the day of serving, defrost thoroughly and assemble the rest.
Although I prefer to freeze them for the holiday season, they can also last a couple of weeks stored in an airtight cookie tin.

The praline can be made up to a month in advance, kept at room temperature.

French Pastry Chef Inspiration from Christophe Michalak's Paris Lab

Thanks to the baking equipment and digital scales experts, Terraillon France, I was invited to a special Christmas Noël pastry demonstration. Given by Chef Alexandre Favre at Christophe Michalak Masterclasses, it was a special treat to see so many top French patisserie ideas made in front of us.
French pastry demonstrations are run in their new Parisian pastry workshop behind the chic boutique in rue du Faubourg Poissonnière in Paris' 10th.

A New Concept for French Meringue - Domes

What a meringue revolution, thanks to Christophe Michalak. I'm not the biggest fan of meringues as, frankly, I find them too sweet. So imagine my surprise: mini meringues had been piped out using upturned silicone mini dome moulds.

The result? Each half sphere or dome has a large hollow inside, leaving a hidden cavity to fill with less sugary fillings!

French Meringue Dome Filled Snowballs

Chef Alexandre's boule de neige meringue balls were sensational. Served as mini meringue snowballs, he had smaller moulds and piped them out as more realistic snowballs without any swirly effects. As my demi sphere moulds were slightly larger, I piped out a spiral effect to make them into larger domes. The result was a rather melted snowball look!

Two separate desserts were prepared during the demonstration, including these impressive Mont Blancs with pear, lemon jelly and praline on lemon cake bases. I was so smitten with the tart lemon jellies that I added them to my melting meringue snowballs to add that zingy acidity to make the meringues slightly less sweet.

French Meringue Balls Filled with Lemon

The result? The lemon just makes it! Although the lemon jelly recipe calls for sugar, it doesn't even need any sugar if you prefer a tart surprise inside.
LEMON TIP: If you're using organic unwaxed lemons for the juice, grate the lemon zest, place in a zip-lock bag and freeze.
Great for a quickly-made Moist Lemon Almond Cake, for example. Although don't freeze the lemon jelly if you do this.

Chef Alexandre uses the French meringue method for his boules de neige snowballs - just like I use in my recipe for Parisian macarons in both my books. I find it so much easier to work with and there's no need to fuss about with a thermometer. Why make things complicated when you can keep it simple?

Why It's Essential to Weigh Out Ingredients

Equal quantities are measured out of the egg whites (like the macaron recipes in my books. I use egg whites that have been stored in the fridge for 3-4 days), sugar then whisked together until soft, firm peaks. Then the sifted icing sugar (powdered sugar) is folded in using a good spatula.

Don't forget that measuring out your ingredients using a good digital scale is vital in French patisserie. For years, I have been using Terraillon's Macaron digital scale for precision and constant results in my baking. As this recipe requires strict measuring, I have not given the measures in cups, as too approximate.

After constant use for over a year since I've had it, the scale's batteries only gave up on me yesterday. The good news is that this kitchen scale lets you know instantly with "Battery" flashing up so that your baking is kept consistent.

How to Make Hollow Meringues

The new Terraillon silicone piping bag comes with a variety of exciting tips, easily clipped on to the bag's holder. To push the batter or whites in the piping bag, use a patisserie scraper (corne en plastique). I used a simple plain tip to pipe out around the moulds.

Two hours later, once the meringues are left to cool, they easily come off the silicone moulds - with a most beautiful hollow ready to fill!

Each meringue base just needs to be filed off using Terraillon's new microfilm grater, part of their new baking utensils range.

This way your melted meringue snowballs can sit perfectly upright without falling over.

Hollow Meringues Filled with Praline, Lemon & Vanilla Chestnut Cream

It's not just a Melting Meringue Snowball - each meringue dome is generously filled with toasted hazelnut praline, bitter lemon jelly, unsugared vanilla cream and I added a candied chestnut (marron glacé) just to complete the French-style festive touch.

Make-Ahead Desserts for a Festive Dinner Party

Again, weighing out the ingredients carefully, the praline can be made in advance and kept at room temperature for up to a month.

Separate the meringues into couples and in each half, fill with praline and lemon jelly; the other half, fill with unsugared vanilla cream and drop in half a candied chestnut (marron glacé).

Stick them together with the vanilla cream, add a tiny dollop on top of each melting meringue snowball and top with some gold leaf and white chocolate shavings.

With huge, special thanks to Terraillon France for hosting the event and to Chef Alexandre Favre for such a wonderful festive demonstration and meringue inspiration from the Christophe Michalak Masterclass in Paris.
Now it's over to you - Express Your Chef! The recipe may look long but please don't be put off.  It's just all explained in detail and so worth the effort.

Serve with a semi-sweet Champagne or Crémant bubbly to celebrate.

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Disclaimer: I was invited by Terraillon France to watch this demonstration. I was not compensated for this post and not obliged to write about the experience. As always, all opinions are my own. Huge thanks to Chef Alexandre Fevre for permission to use his recipe.