Pastelitos de Guayaba Yucatecos

These are from Yucatán. Specifically from the panaderías of Mérida and Valladolid, where they sit in glass cases by mid-morning, dusted heavy with powdered sugar, sold by the piece, wrapped in a square of waxed paper for the walk home. They are not Cuban pastelitos. Those are puff pastry and they are wonderful, but they are a different animal. This is a Yucatecan pastry built on a crumbly shortbread dough with lard and butter, sealed around a thick slab of ate de guayaba.

The defining ingredient is the ate. Not jam, not jelly, not the runny pink stuff in a jar. Ate de guayaba is a dense fruit paste cooked down until you can slice it with a knife, and it is sold in waxed-paper bricks at every Mexican mercado and tienda. If your guayaba bubbles out and runs across the pan when it bakes, you used the wrong product. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and Yucatán's pastry tradition is built on this paste plus the crumb of a serious dough.

My mother kept a brick of ate de membrillo in the cupboard always, the quince version, wrapped in waxed paper and tied with string. She would slice it for breakfast with queso fresco and tell us it was what her own mother did in Jalisco. Years later I tasted these pastelitos in a panadería on Calle 62 in Mérida and recognized the same paste, the same waxed paper, the same logic of a fruit cooked down so heavily it could survive a hot kitchen and a slow oven. The Yucatecos use guayaba because guayaba grows on every other patio in the peninsula. Pregúntale a las señoras del mercado.