Guava Cheese Pastry

This is really supposed to be made using puff pastry dough, but I have in the past used Pillsbury dough and they came out very good.  This is originally a Hispanic dessert, and my husband and I used to purchase them in the Inwood Section of Upper Manhattan when we lived in NY, and were able to frequent the Hispanic bakeries where they made them in individual pastries.

I recently purchased these new 'recipe creations' that Pillsbury markets, and decided to try making the pastries using this.  It is a seamless piece of the dough, so I decided to make one large pastry that can be cut into serving pieces.

This should work well.

Guava paste.  This is actually good to just slice and eat with maybe a nice piece of a mild cheese.  Altogether, I used 2/3 of my package or about 8-9 oz.  You should be able to find this in the Spanish specialty aisle of your supermarket.

I used whipped cream cheese, almost 8 oz.

This was relatively easy to put together.

Use wax paper to work on as it's much easier to work with the dough as you go through the steps.

First, when I opened the dough rectangle, I sprinkled a bit of powdered sugar on it, then spread the cream cheese on top as best I could.  HINT** This is why you might want to used whipped, soft cream cheese, as you can't really spread the cream cheese without breaking the dough.  If it comes down to it, pat it down with your fingertips.

Once that was done, I cut the guava paste (this is not easy either, very sticky and thick) into somewhat thin pieces and placed it on top of the cream cheese, not quite completely covering the cream cheese as the paste will melt a bit as the pastry bakes.

I then rolled one of the long ends of the dough up to the center, then the other end, using the wax paper to manipulate the dough so it didn't stretch or tear.  Once done, I sealed the ends and center seam as best I could.

Using some egg whites to which I mixed in some powdered sugar, I brushed the top and sides of my 'log' well, then sprinkled more powdered sugar, and brushed it with the egg whites again.  Then I scored the dough in a few places.  Try to make the scores deep and separate the dough as it tends to close itself back up.  You may want to check this again during the baking stage after about 10 minutes in the oven.

When this is ready for the oven, line a baking sheet (jelly roll pan) with aluminum foil and spray with cooking spray to avoid sticking.  Using your wax paper, gently so as to not break your log, move it to the baking sheet. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

I checked after 10 minutes of baking, and brushed on a bit more of the egg white/sugar mixture.  I also needed at this point to separate the 'scores' as they had indeed reclosed.

Another 5 minutes of baking (total 15 minutes) and it was ready to come out.

While it is still hot, I took a small sieve and placed some powdered sugar into it and dusted the pastry.

Now this was set aside, and allowed to cool some more, till it was ready to be cut and eaten.

   If you've never had guava paste or jelly, you're in for a wonderful surprise.  It's sweet and tasty.