More About St Michel
The St Michel collection at Epicerie Corner brings together 21 products from this Vendée biscuit manufacturer — classic galettes (plain, chocolate, organic, sesame, cereal), madeleines, palmiers, brownies, Roudor cookies, Tam Tam soft cakes, filled crêpes, Tiger Cakes, Chocorico, Doomino and Savaroises — plus a Cologne de Mont Saint Michel, an eau de cologne that has been sold under the St Michel label alongside the biscuit range.
About St Michel
St Michel is a French biscuit and pâtisserie brand with origins in Saint-Michel-Chef-Chef, a coastal town in Loire-Atlantique; the company is now headquartered in the Vendée. Production began in 1905 and the brand built its reputation on the galette — a crisp, round, lightly golden butter biscuit inspired by the Breton and Vendéen sablé tradition. St Michel galettes use "beurre fin" — a high-quality grade of butter — and are baked at low temperature for the characteristic crunch and melting quality. The range has since expanded into madeleines, palmiers, soft cakes, brownies and filled biscuits, while keeping the galette as its reference product and packaging logo.
Galettes — the Core Range
- St Michel Galettes 130g: the classic butter galette — a thin, round, fluted biscuit with a rich butter flavour and satisfying snap. The 130g tin-style pack is the iconic presentation. St Michel Au Bon Chocolat 121g: the chocolate-heart version — the galette base with a thin chocolate disc at the centre, combining the butter crispness with a smooth milk chocolate note. St Michel Organic Good Butter Wafers 130g: the organic version of the galette, certified AB (Agriculture Biologique), using organic butter and wheat flour — the same recipe reformulated for organic ingredients. St Michel Galettes Céréales 142g: a multigrain variant with added cereals for a more textured, less rich version than the classic. St Michel Galettes Sésame 142g: sesame seed galettes — the sesame adds a toasted, slightly nutty note to the standard butter biscuit.
Madeleines, Brownies and Soft Cakes
- St Michel Madeleines Shells ×24 600g: the madeleine is a shell-shaped French sponge cake from Commercy (Meuse, Lorraine), prepared with eggs, flour, butter and a hint of vanilla — made famous in French literature by Marcel Proust's account of the involuntary memory evoked by dipping a madeleine in lime-flower tea. St Michel produces madeleines in the traditional shell-mould format, individually wrapped for snacking. The x14 Chocolate-Coated version 350g adds a milk chocolate coating. St Michel White Chocolate Brownie Pocket ×8 240g: individually wrapped American-style brownies with white chocolate. St Michel Tiger Cakes 180g: moist chocolate cakes with a tiger-stripe marbled pattern — a richer, denser version of the classic madeleine shape. St Michel Savaroises Chocolat ×8 220g: soft pastry cases filled with chocolate pastry cream. St Michel Tam Tam 275g: St Michel's individually wrapped soft cake rolls — moelleux format, sold in a family sharing bag. St Michel Doonuts Topped 180g: doughnut-shaped soft sponge cakes with a chocolate or icing glaze. St Michel Cake Slices 175g: individually wrapped moelleux chocolate cake slices.
Biscuits, Palmiers and Filled Crêpes
- St Michel Roudor 2×150g: Roudor is St Michel's round, thick-cut cookie — a French adaptation of the American cookie format, with a satisfying buttery dough and chocolate chip or cocoa variants. St Michel Chocolate Palmiers 125g: palmiers are made from puff pastry folded repeatedly and sugar-coated — the layers spread during baking to form the characteristic butterfly or heart shape (known as "pig's ears" in English). The St Michel chocolate version adds milk chocolate to the pastry layers. St Michel Chocorico 225g: a soft biscuit sandwich with chocolate and hazelnut cream filling — positioned as an everyday biscuit-and-chocolate snack. St Michel Doomino Choco Noisette ×6 180g: an individual soft biscuit with three separated cells each filled with chocolate-hazelnut cream, designed for children's snacks. St Michel Filled Crêpes ×7 202g: French-style soft crêpes individually filled and folded — a format combining the traditional French crêpe with a convenient individual-serve presentation. St Michel Organic Shortbread with Chocolate Filling 135g: AB organic shortbread with chocolate cream filling.
For a wider biscuit and snack range, see Snack. For crêpe and waffle products, see Whaou. For baking and pâtisserie ingredients, see Vahine.
St Michel FAQs
What is the difference between a galette and a sablé biscuit?
Both are round French butter biscuits and the terms are often used interchangeably in French biscuit marketing, but there is a traditional distinction. A sablé (from sable, sand) typically uses a short pastry technique — cold butter rubbed into flour and sugar until the mixture resembles fine crumbs, then minimally worked. The result is a very short, crumbly, melt-in-the-mouth biscuit. A galette (from the Breton and Norman tradition) tends to use a slightly different ratio and technique, often with more butter relative to flour, and is typically flatter and crisper rather than crumbly. The St Michel galette falls into the galette tradition: it is a thin, crispy, round biscuit that holds together without crumbling, rather than the more delicate, fragile sablé texture.
What is the origin of the St Michel madeleine?
The madeleine is associated with Commercy (Meuse, Lorraine) and dates to at least the 18th century — one origin story credits a pastry cook named Madeleine Paulmier at the court of King Stanisław of Poland-Lorraine in the 1720s. Marcel Proust's description in À la Recherche du Temps Perdu (1913) of a shell-shaped madeleine dipped in lime-flower tea triggering an involuntary childhood memory made the biscuit an international symbol of French literary and gastronomic culture. The shell shape comes from the coquille Saint-Jacques (scallop) mould used to bake them — a reference to the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela. St Michel's madeleines use the traditional shell mould with vanilla and pure butter.