I was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, and although I left when I was still very young, Puerto Rican food never really left our family.

My father’s family was Spanish, primarily from Mallorca and Barcelona. His parents grew up in Spain and moved to Puerto Rico as young adults, where they began their family. My dad was part of that first generation raised in Puerto Rico, so his childhood became a beautiful meeting of the Spanish traditions his parents brought with them and the Puerto Rican culture that surrounded him. And naturally, much of that meeting happened around food.

My mother was British, but she became quite a wonderful keeper of those traditions herself. She learned family recipes, including an old flan recipe, and made the rice and beans, plantains, and other foods my father had grown up eating. Alongside them were the British dishes she brought from her own childhood, and somehow both traditions simply became the food of our family.

My parents spent only the early years of their marriage in Puerto Rico before eventually moving to Las Vegas, but my mother kept cooking those familiar foods. My dad loved that. Home had moved thousands of miles away, but some part of it could still appear on the dinner table.

After my mother died, I could see how much my dad missed those foods.

So whenever I went home to visit him, I cooked.

I made the things he remembered and loved—stuffed peppers, tostones, different plantain dishes, and whatever else I knew would bring something familiar back to his plate. Of course, by then I was making all of them plant-based. My dad wasn’t vegan, but the funny thing is, he never asked whether something was vegan. He didn’t seem particularly interested in what I had replaced or how I had made it. If it tasted good, he ate it—and he loved everything I made for him.

I think that meant even more to me. I wasn’t asking him to give up the foods he remembered. I was finding another way to make them, while keeping the flavors and traditions he loved intact.

And one of his absolute favorites was guava pastry.

I can still see him sitting in his recliner when I brought one to him. His eyes would light up the moment he saw it.

My dad wasn’t someone who made a great fuss about food. He was much more of an eat to live person than a live to eat person. He rarely complained about anything put in front of him and was always grateful that someone had taken the time to feed him well.

Maybe that’s why those moments meant so much to me.

Food was one of the things I could give him when I visited, along with our wonderful conversations and all that father-daughter love. And when I could actually see the pleasure something brought him, it felt like a gift coming right back to me.

I don’t remember him ever leaving a crumb of those guava pastries on his plate.

That still makes me smile.

Guava itself was always part of his life. There was almost always guava paste in his pantry. He ate it with cheese and crackers, or sometimes simply by itself. When you grow up somewhere tropical like Puerto Rico, fruits such as guava, mangoes, and avocados aren’t exotic discoveries. They’re simply part of the landscape and the food around you.

When we returned to Puerto Rico in later years, some of the scenes that stayed with me weren’t grand landmarks at all. They were the little neighborhood mercados on the corners.

There would almost always be a pastry case inside. People stopped for something sweet and a cup of coffee, then lingered outside talking and telling stories. Food wasn’t separate from conversation or community; they seemed to naturally belong together.

I miss that.

It’s something I still admire about Latin and Mediterranean cultures—that instinct to linger, to talk, to eat, to make ordinary moments social rather than rushing through them.

And perhaps that is part of why I still love these little pastries so much.

When I discovered that I could buy vegan puff pastry, making them became almost ridiculously easy. Cut the pastry. Add a generous spoonful of cream cheese. Lay a few slices of guava paste over it. Put on the little pastry lid, crimp the edges, brush the top, and into the oven it goes.

Almost no effort.

And then somehow this glorious thing emerges: crisp golden layers that shatter and flake with the first bite, warm fruity guava inside, and cool tangy cream cheese transformed into something soft and luscious beside it.

The reward is wildly disproportionate to the work.

Perhaps that’s why these have also become one of Lloyd’s favorite desserts. He’s not nearly the pastry person I am, so I’ve always found it funny that this is the dessert he asks me to make again and again.

I understand it, though.

Put a plate of warm guava and cream cheese pastries on the counter, make a pot of tea—or, in my case, perhaps a warm cup of Teeccino—and sit down with someone you love. Talk for longer than you intended. Let pastry flakes fall everywhere. Have another one.

They somehow taste even better that way.

And yes, I still say to try eating just one.

I generally consider two while they’re freshly baked and warm a perfectly reasonable opening-day policy. After that, perhaps one a day until they’re gone.

They never seem to be around long enough for this policy to become particularly important.

These little pastries carry Puerto Rico for me, but they carry my family too: my mother’s kitchen, my father’s smile, those neighborhood mercados, and now my own kitchen and the people I feed today.

All tucked inside a pastry that takes almost no effort at all.

Which makes it exactly the kind of delicious little thing that belongs in Meals For When You Don’t Want to Try.