Kitchen Secrets with Our Cuban Chef – Pastelitos de Guayaba
Walk into any Cuban bakery in Tampa in the morning and the tray nearest the register will be pastelitos: squares of puff pastry filled with guava, glossy with sugar glaze, still warm. Order one with a colada and you have had a Cuban breakfast.
The pairing of guava with cream cheese is not decoration. The paste is intensely sweet and the cream cheese cuts straight through it, which is why the combination shows up over and over in Cuban baking.
Bakeries make their own dough. At home, good frozen puff pastry gets you most of the way there.
Guava, cheese and Ybor City
Guava grows across the Caribbean and Central America, and cooking the fruit down with sugar into a firm paste was the practical way to keep it through the year. Pasta de guayaba appears in Cuban, Colombian, Brazilian and Mexican kitchens under different names.
Pairing it with fresh cheese is older than any of those national cuisines. In Cuba the combination is so standard it has a nickname: casquitos de guayaba con queso at the end of a meal, pastelitos in the morning.
In Tampa the pastry has its own history. The Cuban and Spanish bakeries of Ybor City were turning them out by the hundreds a century ago for cigar workers walking to the factories, and the neighbourhood bakeries never stopped.
Ingredients
- 2 sheets frozen puff pastry, thawed in the refrigerator
- 14 oz guava paste (pasta de guayaba), cut into thin slabs
- 8 oz cream cheese, cold, cut into small pieces
- 1 egg beaten with 1 tbsp water, for the wash
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1/4 cup water
How to make Cuban Guava Pastelitos (Pastelitos de Guayaba)
- Heat the oven to 400F and line two baking sheets with parchment.
- Roll each pastry sheet lightly on a floured surface to even it out, then cut each into 9 squares.
- Place a slab of guava paste on 9 of the squares, leaving a half-inch border. Add a few pieces of cream cheese on top of each.
- Brush the borders with egg wash, lay a second square over each one, and press the edges down with a fork to seal.
- Cut two small slits in the top of each pastry so steam escapes, then brush the tops with egg wash.
- Bake 20 to 22 minutes, until puffed and deep golden. Rotate the sheets halfway through.
- While they bake, make the glaze: bring the sugar and water to a boil in a small pan and cook 2 minutes until slightly syrupy.
- Brush the glaze over the pastries the moment they come out of the oven. Let them cool at least 10 minutes before eating, since the guava is molten.
Chef’s notes
- Keep everything cold. Warm puff pastry will not rise into layers, so work quickly and chill the assembled pastries for 10 minutes before baking if your kitchen is hot.
- Guava paste comes in a firm block. Slice it thin, about a quarter inch, or the filling will run out before the pastry sets.
- The glaze is what gives them the shine you see at a Cuban bakery counter. Brush it on while the pastries are still hot.
How to eat them
Pastelitos are a morning food. Have one with a cortadito or a colada shared among a few people, which is how it is actually done in Tampa.
They are best within a few hours of baking. If you need to keep them, leave them uncovered at room temperature overnight and reheat in a 350F oven for 5 minutes to bring the layers back.
Prefer to let us cook?
We make cuban guava pastelitos (pastelitos de guayaba) fresh every day at our kitchen on 5555 S 78th St in Tampa. You can order Pastelitos for pickup, or browse the full Cuban menu and skip the line.
