flaky puff-pastry parcels filled with sweet dark guava paste, often with cream cheese besides, glazed and sugar-dusted, the beloved guava pastry of the Cuban bakery in Havana and Miami alike
Origin: Cuba
From the journey of Guava.
The pastelito de guayaba is the great guava pastry of the Cuban bakery, a flaky parcel of puff pastry enclosing a square of sweet, dark guava paste, sold warm from every panaderia in Havana and, since the great migration, in every Cuban neighbourhood of Miami. It rests on the genius of guava paste, the pasta de guayaba that the Spanish taught the Caribbean to make by simmering the perishable fruit with sugar into a dense, sliceable block that keeps for months. A square of that paste is folded into buttery puff pastry, often with a slab of cream cheese alongside (the pastelito de guayaba y queso, the most loved version of all), then baked until golden and shatteringly crisp, brushed with a sugar glaze, and eaten with a strong cafecito. Cut into neat rectangles or folded into little envelopes, the pastelito is breakfast, snack, and celebration sweet at once, a fixture of the Cuban morning and of every party and gathering. It is the guava at its most everyday and most beloved in the Hispanic Caribbean, the dark sweet fruit paste wrapped in flaky pastry.
Guava paste (pasta de guayaba or goiabada) is sold in blocks and tins at Latin American shops. The guava-and-cream-cheese version (de guayaba y queso) is the most popular; guava alone is also classic. The same fillings, in different shapes, make empanada-style pastries. Best eaten the day they are baked, while the pastry is crisp.
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