Green Hatchling Salted Caramel Choux Pastry

My younger kid has taken a liking to one of the plushies at home. It's the green hatchling from Angry Birds. He has it around when he reads in bed, and brings it to the study table when he studied for exams. The hatchling is named Grip by my kids so let's call him that. Grip has become a family member and friend of sorts so that's why I decided to make Grip salted caramel choux pastries for my kid's birthday! 

Grip with various expressions! I made it so as part of my first attempt at stop motion video. 

A view of the cross section! 

Have a look at the stop motion video over here! 

I used my default recipe for choux au craquelin but didn't bake from frozen batter. I will share the ingredient list here since some of you may be interested in the colouring I used. But please refer to the method in the reference post. 

Craquelin ingredients:

21g unsalted butter

18g sugar

21g cake or plain flour

2 drops lime green/mint green gel colouring 

2 drops electric yellow gel colouring 

1/2 tsp white powder colouring 

Extra notes for craquelin: 

You may scale up the recipe. I was making a small batch

Choux batter ingredients:

110g water

40g bread flour

20g plain flour

20g olive oil

20g unsalted butter

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp sugar 

2 eggs

1 tsp white powder colouring 

A pinch of yellow powder colouring 

2 drops lime or mint green gel colouring 

4 drops yellow gel colouring (extra if necessary for the beak and feet batter) 

Extra notes for choux batter:

I divided the cooked dough in ratio of 1:4 for yellow: green, added the extra gel colours before adding the egg to the respective coloured batters. 

For Grip's hair, I used celery fibers that are blanched for 1 min and dehydrated in oven for an hour at 90-100C. 

Blanched and dehydrated celery fibers. 

So glad the "hair" and choux bun are so close in shade😍😍😍

I didn't take photos of the small parts like beaks, feet, tail and wings. They were all made of choux as well. The eyes were made from royal icing transfers. 

I drew the eyes on paper and used it as template for piping the eyes. 

The filling is salted caramel and salted caramel diplomat cream with mini crunchy chocolate balls. 

You may refer to this post for the salted caramel recipe. I thinned it with a little milk so it is more oozy. You may add crushed biscoff biscuits instead of crunchy chocolate balls. I just didn't want to buy an extra packet of biscuit for this😂. 

Salted caramel diplomat cream

Ingredients:

2 egg yolks

20g brown sugar

20g cornflour 

200g milk 

1 tsp vanilla extract 

1/4 tsp caramel flavouring (optional) 

15g unsalted butter 

20-30g salted caramel

65g whipping cream of choice (dairy, non-dairy or a combination) 

30g crunchy chocolate balls/crushed biscoff biscuits (adjust amount according to taste, omit if you prefer) 

Steps:

1. Heat milk, vanilla and caramel flavouring (if using) in a small saucepan until steaming hot (not boiling). In the mean time, whisk together egg yolks, brown sugar, cornflour and salt in a heavy bowl or glass measuring jug. 

2. Pour hot milk into egg yolk mixture in a thin stream while whisking the egg yolks continuously. Pour everything back into saucepan and heat over medium-low heat while whisking continuously. 

3. Once mixture thickens, remove from heat and continue whisking until mixture smoothens out. Place back on stove and whisk continuously while cooking to preferred consistency. 

4. Remove from heat and add butter and salted caramel and whisk until well combined. Press a cling film on surface of pastry cream and refrigerate until firm, at least 1h.

5. Whip up whipping cream of choice till firm or stiff peaks. Remove pastry cream from fridge and beat it briefly with spatula to loosen texture. Fold in whipped cream to make diplomat cream. 

6. Fold in crunchy chocolate balls or crushed biscoff biscuit crumbs. 

7. Transfer into piping bag. Fill pastries shortly before eating. Note that biscuit or crunchy cookie items do not stay crisp in the filling for long so if you want to enjoy the crunch within the filling, add in the crunchy bits only shortly before filling and serving. 

Grip is so cute I couldn't resist taking more pictures! 

Twinning! 

Pastry Grip with the real life Grip! 

As it is my kid's last year in primary school, I decided to make a graduation version as well! 

The hats are made of macarons and sour candy strips. You may refer to my Macaron Basics book for the regular sized macaron version. 

I hope this post puts a smile on your face as much as Grip (both real and pastry versions) did for my little one and all of us at home! 

With lots of love, 

Phay Shing