Peppa Pig Lychee Rose Custard Cream Puff

My friend requested for Peppa Pig themed bakes for her daughter's birthday. Incidentally, I know the little girl from Creche where I serve in church so it's a nice thing to be able to bake for a sweetie that I know personally. Another friend of mine wanted me to make lychee flavoured pastry cream for her choux pastry birthday bake next year (booking me super early!) So I thought why not try out this flavour. Presenting my version of Peppa Pig Lychee Rose cream puffs!

Here's a closer look at the cross-section. You can't see the lychee bits very clearly although there are chunks of it in the cream.

I used canned lychee in syrup for the chopped lychees, and freeze dried lychee powder to enhance the lychee flavour.

One small can of lychee (234g net weight, 95g drained weight) yielded about 61g chopped lychee with the woody part removed.

Recipe for lychee rose pastry cream
Ingredients:
200ml milk
30g sugar
20g cornflour
2 egg yolks
10g unsalted butter
1/4 tsp rose water (omit if you prefer no rose flavour)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp freeze-dried lychee powder (optional, omit if unavailable. Use more canned chopped lychee instead)
Chopped lychee, woody part removed (add as much or little as you prefer)

Smooth lychee rose custard

Fold in 60g of chopped lychee into 120-140g of rose pastry cream. Use less pastry cream of you are not using freeze-dried lychee powder.

Recipe for Choux pastry case can be found here. Just to share some pictures of the process...

Piping peppa pig choux pastry

Bake at 180℃ for 20min, 160℃ for 20 min and cool in the oven with the oven switched off for another 10min.

I mentioned in my previous choux pastry post that I will show you how I fill the cases now. I cut a hole at the base and put the cut piece back. The requester can fill the pastry cream anytime she likes and enjoy the pastry shell while it's still crisp but the cream while it is still cold.

Nice hollow interior! I still find the walls a little thick for mg liking although I love the texture. I may tweak the recipe again for my next Choux pastry bake.

I used royal icing for Peppa Pig's eyes and cheek. Let the royal icing dry completely before carefully removing them from the parchment paper

Piped eyes and cheeks

Premaking these parts makes decorating the pastry much easier as you may just stick it on after coating the surface with chocolate.

Strawberry white chocolate coating
Ingredients:
60g white chocolate, chopped (or compound white chocolate chop)
6g vegetable shortening
1-2 drops of strawberry emulco
Pinches of salt

Steps:
1. Place white chocolate and shortening in a microwave safe bowl. Heat at medium power for 10-20 sec and mix well. Repeat until completely melted.

2. Add salt and mix well. Add strawberry emulco one drop at a time and mix well after each addition, until desired pink shade is obtained.

3. Transfer to piping bag and pipe onto choux pastry case surface. You may use your clean and dry finger to smooth out the white chocolate while it is not completely set yet, in order to get a smoother looking finish. Stick the eyes and rosy cheek on before the chocolate hardens.

See the difference between freshly piped and smoothed out white chocolate.

Prepare some red coloured white chocolate mixture and pipe or paint on the mouth and nostrils.

You may store decorated choux pastry cases in airtight container.

With love,
Phay Shing