I've never been super into croissants until I tasted the cream filled options at smallSUGAR, a local bakery and breakfast/lunch spot. Once I saw on their morning Instagram stories that they had key lime croissants and I was super intrigued. Then came the lavender croissants, which I grabbed immediately after seeing the story — think throwing on pants and shoes and cranking up the car within 10 minutes of seeing it on my screen.
That sublime croissant experience led me to think about what other flavors could be stuffed into that croissant via pastry cream. The thought came to me whilst I was drinking a bottle of WTRMLN WTR, and the two began to mingle in my head. Watermelon tinged cream to fill up the croissants? I think it could work!
What kind of croissants should you use?
I tried this recipe three times. Once I tried to make cheater's puff pastry croissants, but they were nowhere near fluffy enough to stuff with pastry cream. The second iteration, I bought the really curved croissants from The Fresh Market. While they were okay, I think those type of croissants are better suited to be sandwiches. This go round, I won with the straight, plain, big croissants from LIDL. And they are only .79 per croissant! You can't beat that, especially for the quality too.
Of course, you can make your own croissants but that's a lot of work and time in the kitchen. You do you though, so if you can make super fluffy croissants, get it. And send me photos of your entirely from scratch watermelon croissants, I want to see those! Another tricky part is filling the croissants, so watch this croissant-making video at the 6:40 mark to see how to fill these croissants with pastry cream and a piping bag.
Watermelon Croissants
Ingredients
Croissants and Pastry Cream Filling
- 3 big croissants
- 1 ½ cups whole milk
- ½ cup watermelon juice (or WTRMLN water)
- 1 egg
- 2 egg yolks
- ½ cup white sugar
- 3 tablespoons cornstarch
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
Glaze
- ½ cup powdered sugar
- ½ tablespoon milk
- ½ tablespoon watermelon juice
Instructions
- For the watermelon juice: use pre-made watermelon juice like WTRMLN water, or puree slices of watermelon in a blender. Pour the juice through a mesh sieve before using. Discard pulp and seeds. Refrigerate any leftover watermelon juice for a refreshing treat later.
- To make the pastry cream, heat the milk in a medium sized saucepan over medium to medium high heat. Once the milk begins to steam, remove it from the heat. Do not let the milk boil.
- Once removed from heat, stir in the ½ cup of watermelon juice and let mixture stand for 10 minutes.
- Meanwhile, whisk the eggs and sugar together in a bowl for 60 seconds.
- Combine the salt and cornstarch, then add to the sugar-egg mixture. Whisk for 5 minutes.
- Temper the egg mixture by spooning in the hot watermelon milk mixture, one tablespoon at a time, while constantly whisking the egg mixture. Do this SLOWLY until all of the milk is combined into the eggs. Pour the whole mixture back into the saucepan.
- Over medium heat, keep whisking for 5 minutes. Do not let it boil. Once the mixture has thickened a bit, remove from the heat and add in the butter that has been cut into smaller pieces.
- Whisk until the butter melts and let mixture stand for a few minutes. Pour into a glass container and tightly close the lid. Refrigerate for 20 minutes at least.
- When ready, pour ½ cup of the pastry cream into a piping bag fitting with a medium sized tip (I used Wilton ##). Poke the piping tip into the bottom of the croissant and squeeze to fill with cream. You can poke 2 holes in each side of the croissant bottom if desired. Set each croissant aside on a plate. OR, cut each croissant in half lengthwise with a bread knife. Spread pastry cream over the middle of the croissant, and sandwich the glaze between the two halves.
- Mix together the glaze ingredients in a small bowl. Use a spoon to drizzle the glaze over the filled croissants.
These are a little bit involved, but not too bad. The stirring is probably the most tedious thing here. I like to bring my laptop into the kitchen and watch a show while constantly stirring.
You'll want to eat these fairly quickly after making them. You can keep the pastry cream and glaze tightly sealed in the fridge. Then you can fill and glaze croissants as needed instead of doing a bunch at once. The pastry cream needs to be used within three days of being made. This recipe does make a LOT of pastry cream, more than you'll need for just three croissants. It's a hard recipe to cut in half due to the eggs though, which is why I didn't.
Watermelon pastry cream could also be used to fill danishes, eclairs, a summery trifle, or you can just feed a ton of people watermelon croissants! At .79 a croissant, it wouldn't be an expensive breakfast or treat to feed a group!
Want more watermelon?
