Pastellilos de Guayaba

                        Pastelillos de Guayaba               

 

    I have so much memories of food in my childhood, but one of my favorit memories was with my grandfather. My grandfather used to pick me up from school in his car, and after school he used to take me and my siblings to the bakery where would get a treat from him before going home. I remeber My little sisther and my brother going crazy with all the different pastries availabel for there choosing. But ever since I could remember I have always had a love for pastelillos de Guyaba. I remember how he used to give each $5 and we would get a drink and a pastry, Remeber taking them home and being able to spoil our dinner just because our grandfather would spoiled us. 

    When moving to america My mom used to buy them at the spanish supermarket but they never tasted the same they where not as crunchy  they where a little soggy then what I remembered them being back at home. Then I got pregnant with my second daughter, And these where my obsesion through the whole pregnancy and one of my weakness so my mom used to buy me the soggy pastelillos from the supermarket and I ate them. I used to dreamed with the crunchy and sweetness of the guayaba paste, while the powder suggar got all over my shirt, this was what they tasted back home and I wanted to taste like that again. It took me two years after my second daughter was borned to learn how to make them, I always believed that making these where hard but this is actually the easiest pastrie I have ever done. 

Ingredients

• Puff pastry sheets
• Guyaba 
• powdered suggar 
• water.

    The ingrediants are fearly cheap you will waist like 15-20 dollars in the ingrediants and the preaping plus cooking you will take about 30 min in total. The puff  pastry sheets you can choose to cut them into 9 peaces in equal sizes, this will make 3 pastelillos and this is the first step. After choosing the size and cutting them into there equal size square and cutting the guayaba we would grab a peace or two of guayab and place it in the middle of the square. Know why is water part of the ingredients well because we have to layer the pastelillo and we would use the water around the border so the puff pastrie when it's being cooked would not open and it will stick together, we did that process twice and this became a two layer pastelillo. After this was finished being preping with the layering and adding the guaba, We would proced to the last step witch was cooking the pasteles for about 15 minutes and we would turn it once inside the oven so they would cook equally into perfection. The first time I made pastelillos I shared them with my family to hear there opinion of how they tasted. and I will be honest I kinda burned them. But after 11 years of not tasting a crunchy pastelillo like back in Puerto Rico when I made them at home I finally remembered the taste and texture that I loved when I was a child. My mom and grandparents loved them and I probably have made thousands of pastelillos for my whole family ever since I learned how to make them. 

    

Best, 

Erinett N. Oliveras