Gizzada.

Name: Gizzada (Pinch-Me-Round Coconut Tart)
Prep time: 40 min
Cook time: 45 min
Total time: 2 h 15 min
Yield: 12 servings
Cuisine: Jamaica
Ingredients: 280 g plain flour; 140 g cold butter, cubed; 1 tbsp sugar; ¾ tsp fine salt; 70 ml ice-cold water; 400 g freshly grated coconut; 220 g dark brown sugar; 150 ml water; 1 tsp nutmeg, freshly grated; 10 g fresh ginger, finely grated; ½ tsp ground cinnamon; 20 g butter; 1 pinch salt; 1 egg, beaten, for glazing the rims

Pinch-Me-Round Coconut Tart

Gizzada · say it: gih-ZAH-dah

Gizzada is a small open tart with a hand-pinched pastry rim and a filling of grated coconut simmered in brown sugar syrup with nutmeg and ginger until it turns dark, sticky and chewy. The pastry is short and slightly salty, which is what keeps the filling from being cloying, and the texture contrast is the whole appeal: brittle crust, soft yielding coconut, and the deep molasses note of dark sugar underneath. Jamaicans call it pinch-me-round after the crimped edge, which is made by pinching the pastry between thumb and finger all the way around rather than pressing it into a tin. It is bakery food and market food, sold in cellophane bags beside grater cakes and bulla, and it keeps for days without losing anything.

Jump to the recipe

Read the story

Pinch-Me-Round Coconut Tart

Gate: Jamaica
Prep: 40 min
Cook: 45 min
Total time: 2 hr 15 min incl. 50 min rest
Serves: 12
Status: Medium
Nutrition / serving · estimated: Calories 380 kcal; Protein 4 g; Carbs 42 g; Fat 23 g; Fiber 4 g; Sugar 26 g; Sodium 190 mg

Why this recipe works.

The filling is cooked on the stove first, so it sets to a chewy texture instead of weeping syrup into the pastry.
A short, faintly salty crust that balances the sugar rather than adding more of it.
Hand-pinched free-form cases with a described technique, so you need no tart tins at all.
Uses fresh or frozen grated coconut with a workable route for dried, which most desiccated-coconut versions get wrong.

Tips from our kitchen.

Use fresh or frozen grated coconut if you can find it. Desiccated coconut works but must be rehydrated in warm water for 20 minutes first or the filling turns dry and sandy.
Cook the filling until a spoon dragged across the pan leaves a track that closes slowly. Undercooked filling stays runny and soaks the base.
Let the filling cool to warm, not hot, before it goes into the cases. Hot syrup melts the butter in the pastry immediately.
Pinch the rim up to about 1.5 cm high. A low rim lets the syrup run out and weld the tart to the tray.
Chill the shaped cases for 20 minutes before filling and baking — cold pastry holds its crimped shape in the oven.
Bake until the filling bubbles at the edges and the pastry is pale gold underneath. Over-baking makes the coconut hard rather than chewy.

Substitutions.

Fresh grated coconut → Frozen grated coconut, thawed, or 200 g desiccated coconut soaked in 200 ml warm water: Frozen is nearly as good as fresh and sold in Caribbean and Asian shops. Desiccated must be rehydrated or the filling will be dry.
Dark brown sugar → Light brown sugar plus 1 tbsp molasses: The molasses is what gives gizzada its dark colour and slightly bitter depth, so do not use white sugar alone.
Fresh ginger → 1/2 tsp ground ginger: Fresh grated ginger gives a brighter heat that cuts the sweetness better, but ground is entirely traditional in home versions.

Variations.

Rum gizzada: Stir a tablespoon of dark Jamaican rum into the filling after it comes off the heat. Common in bakery versions aimed at adults.
Plantain tart: The same pastry folded around spiced sweetened plantain instead of coconut. The other classic Jamaican bakery hand pastry, often sold beside gizzada.
Coconut drops: The same coconut, sugar and ginger cooked without pastry and dropped in spoonfuls onto a tray to set hard. The simpler, older sweet the filling comes from.

Storage & reheating.

Gizzada keeps unusually well — 5 days in an airtight tin at room temperature, and the filling actually improves after a day as the syrup settles into the coconut. Do not refrigerate; the cold makes the pastry damp and the filling hard. They freeze for up to 2 months, baked and fully cooled, and thaw at room temperature in about an hour. Refresh a slightly soft one at 160C for 5 minutes to bring the crust back.

Serve with

Strong black coffee or Jamaican sorrel, and a second gizzada.

The story behind Gizzada.

Gizzada is generally traced to Jamaica's Portuguese Jewish community, descendants of Sephardim who fled the Iberian Peninsula after the expulsions and inquisitions of the late fifteenth century. Jamaica, under Spanish and then British rule, became one of the places where they settled in numbers, and Spanish Town and Port Royal held established congregations. The tart resembles Portuguese coconut tartlets — queijadas and their coconut variants — and the name itself is usually explained as a Jamaican rendering of queijada, though the linguistic path is not documented and the connection is inferred rather than proven.

What is certain is that the dish changed once it landed. Coconut replaced the cheese or almond of the Iberian originals, since coconut palms grow everywhere on the island and grated coconut is a cheap year-round ingredient. Dark brown sugar and molasses, both products of the sugar estates that shaped Jamaica's economy, gave the filling its colour and its bitter-sweet edge. And nutmeg went in heavily — Jamaica grows nutmeg, and the spice appears in a striking number of the island's sweets, from gizzada to grater cake to carrot juice.

The pinched edge is not decorative alone. Gizzada is a free-form tart made without a tin: the pastry round is placed on a tray and the rim is pinched up into a low wall, which holds the syrupy filling in place while it bakes and sets. Jamaican bakeries make them small, roughly the size of the palm, and sell them alongside plantain tarts and coconut drops. They are one of the very few Jamaican sweets that travel well, which is why they show up in every diaspora bakery and in suitcases leaving the island.

Questions, answered.

Why is gizzada called pinch-me-round?

Because of how it is made. The pastry is not pressed into a tin but rolled into a round, laid flat on a tray, and the edge is pinched up between thumb and finger all the way around to form a low crimped wall that holds the filling. The nickname describes that hand-pinched rim, and it is used interchangeably with gizzada in Jamaica.

Can I use desiccated coconut instead of fresh?

Yes, but it must be rehydrated first. Soak 200 g of unsweetened desiccated coconut in about 200 ml of warm water for 20 minutes and drain lightly before cooking it with the syrup. Used dry, it absorbs all the syrup during baking and the filling turns sandy and hard instead of chewy. Frozen grated coconut is the better substitute if you can find it.

Why did the filling run out of my tarts?

Either the filling was undercooked or the rim was too low. The syrup should be reduced on the stove until dragging a spoon through it leaves a track that closes slowly, which means it will set rather than flow. Pinch the pastry rim up to at least 1.5 cm, and chill the shaped cases before baking so they hold that height in the oven.

How sweet is gizzada?

Genuinely sweet — this is a sugar-and-coconut confection and it makes no apology for it. What keeps it balanced is the pastry, which should be short and lightly salted, and the nutmeg and ginger, which cut through the sugar. If yours tastes flat rather than rich, the usual fix is more salt in the crust and more freshly grated nutmeg, not less sugar.

Is gizzada really Portuguese in origin?

The connection to Jamaica's Portuguese Jewish community is widely accepted and the tart clearly resembles Iberian queijadas, with the name usually explained as a local rendering of that word. That said, the specific path is inferred from resemblance rather than documented, so it is fairer to call it a strong likelihood than a settled fact.

All recipes →