Authentic Cuban Pastelitos recipe

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Cuban-Hawaaiin Cooking

Pastelitos Recipe (little pies)
courtesy of Cocina Cubana Club (please join) / Pascual Perez and chef Sonia Martinez

The word "pastel" means pies in Spanish. Pastelitos is the diminutive and it usually means the small round or triangular pastries with fillings. Usually pastelitos are made with delicate, flaky puff pastry, but other doughs can be used. I prefer the puff pastry.

[webmaster's note: although this is a pastry recipe, you will find in some places that "pasteles" or "pastelitos" are sometimes filled with browned hamburger meat and fried in oil, something like a "meat pie". These meat pies, especially from Natchitoches, are a specialty here in Louisiana and pretty popular. For those of you who email me asking, there is only one website I know of to buy guava filled Cuban Pastelitos online, click here to visit their site]

Puff pastry is very time consuming, though not hard to do. I don't make my own much any more as it needs cooler temperatures and a drier climate than where I live; so instead, I have come to rely on store-bought sheets of puff pastry. Pepperidge Farm puff pastry comes two sheets to a package and I use this for small quantities. If we are doing a catering job or for large gatherings I buy the commercial sheets from my food wholesaler.

TO SHAPE THE PASTELITOS:

When using Pepperidge Farm:
-Take the sheets of puff pastry and smooth out the folds a little bit (do not oversmooth it)
-With a very sharp knife, make cuts across the sheets, as if you were drawing the lines for playing tic-tac-toe. You will have 9 squares per sheet.
-Place filling (about a teaspoon full) in the middle of the square.
-Fold down from top corner to lower corner to enclose the filling and form a triangle.
-Press all around the two open edges with a fork to seal tightly.
-Place pastries on a cookie sheet or jelly roll pan, not too close so that they can puff up without touching the next one.
-Brush the tops with a simple syrup (sugar water-same amount sugar as water) using a pastry brush.
-Place in 350oF oven on the middle rack. Takes about 20-30 minutes to puff up and turn golden and flaky (depends on your oven and altitude, so keep a close eye on the first batch to test your oven)
NOTE: The less you handle the sheets of pastry the more it will puff up.

FILLINGS:

Almost anything can be used as a filling. The traditional filings are small dabs of guava marmalade and cream cheese, "picadillo" (*) style meat fillings, or a sweetened cream cheese filling.

Other fillings I have used successfully:
Sweet Fillings:
-Mango pieces cooked in sugar to form a marmalade.
-Apple pie filling (I like the Comstock brand)- add a small dusting of cinnamon after you brush tops with the sugar water.
-Cherry pie filling (same brand as above)

Savory Fillings:
-Cream cheese and fresh herbs such as basil or thyme. You need to taste your batch as you add the herbs to the cream cheese to make sure the taste comes through.
-Picadillo style ground beef.
-Cream cheese and ground up potted meats, such as Devil's Ham or Chicken. Once, in a pinch, I even used Spam ground up in the cream cheese. it worked, they were good!.

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How to make pastelitos filled with either guava pineapple cheese or other fillings, the traditional way to cook a pastelito de guayaba queso fresa y pina.