Timbitas. Guava cream cookie sandwich. 10 to an order.
Timbitas are guava-cream sandwich cookies — two soft vanilla rounds with a thick layer of pink guava filling pressed between them, sold ten to a pack.
They sit in the same family as merienda cookies you'd find on a corner cafeteria counter in Hialeah next to the cafecito thermoses. The guava cream is sweet but not aggressive, and the cookie itself stays soft rather than crisp — which is why they hold up so well dunked in coffee.
Common Uses: afternoon merienda with cafecito or cortadito, after-school snack for kids, dessert component on a coffee tray, quick sweet alongside a colada at the office.
Cultural Context: Guava and cheese, guava and cream, guava and pastry — the guayaba pairing is the backbone of Cuban sweets, and timbitas are the portable, lunchbox version of that tradition. For diaspora households, these are the cookies that show up in care packages from Miami relatives and disappear from the tin within a week.
Pairs With: Café Bustelo or La Llave espresso, cortadito, a glass of cold milk, queso crema for the guayaba-y-queso combination if you want to push it further.
Ships nationwide to Cuban-American households where the guava cookie supply runs out faster than anything else in the pantry.