Jamaican · Dessert
Gizzada
- Intermediate
- 45 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a sweet edge rounding the corners, leaving a faint perfume.
Ingredients
- 250 g plain flour
- 125 g cold butter, diced
- 15 g sugar
- 0.5 tsp salt
- 70 ml ice water
- 250 g freshly grated coconut
- 150 g dark brown sugar
- 120 ml water
- 20 g fresh ginger, finely grated
- 0.5 tsp grated nutmeg
- 30 g butter
- 1 tsp vanilla
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
Reducing a saucePie crust & blind bakingChilling to firm: the fridge as binderRubbing fat into flour
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Rub the cold butter into the flour, sugar and salt until it looks like coarse crumbs with flakes of butter still visible, bind with ice water, then wrap and chill until firm.
- Roll to 3 mm, cut 10 cm rounds, and pinch each rim upward at eight points into a crimped wall about 1.5 cm high that stands on its own.
- Cook the coconut, brown sugar, water, ginger and nutmeg together, stirring, until the syrup runs off the spoon in a thick thread and a spatula drawn across the pan leaves a track that closes slowly. Stir in the butter and vanilla off the heat.
- Cool the filling to warm, not hot, then spoon it into the shells to just below the crimp.
- Bake at 180C (355F) for about 25 minutes, until the rim is sandy gold and the filling has darkened and set at the edges. Cool in the tins. 25 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Pie crust & blind baking 29 recipes
- The shell goes into the oven cold and the oven is fully up to heat, so the structure sets before the fat has time to melt out of it.
- Lined and weighted right into the corners rather than heaped in the middle, so the sides are held against the tin as the fat softens.
- Docked where it is not meant to puff, and the base stays flat rather than lifting into a dome under its own steam.
- The weights come out and the base gets dry heat of its own before anything wet arrives. Pale and damp is not baked, and a filling will not finish it.
- The edges are set and coloured and the shell releases from the tin rather than gripping it.
Where it goes wrong It went in warm, or the weights only filled the middle. The sides slump down the tin before the pastry sets, so the case is shallower than it should be, the filling overflows it, and the base is still raw underneath: the soggy bottom, arrived at three ways at once.
Rubbing fat into flour 47 recipes
- The fat is cold when it starts and still firm when the rubbing stops, and the bowl has not warmed under the hands.
- Stopped early, while it still looks like coarse crumbs with pieces of fat visible in it, not worked on to a smooth even sand, which means the pieces have gone.
- Nothing is greasy or glossy and nothing has smeared into a paste against the side of the bowl.
- Liquid added last and only enough to bring it together: pressed, it just holds, with no wet patch and nothing sticking to the hand.
- Rested cold before it is rolled or shaped, so the gluten relaxes and the fat firms again after being handled.
Where it goes wrong The fat was too warm, or it was rubbed until the mixture looked uniform. Once the fat has melted into the flour there are no solid pieces left to steam apart in the oven, so the bake is sandy or tough instead of flaky, and nothing done later puts those layers back.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Demi-sec Champagne
- Also Right
- Off-dry Chenin (Vouvray)
- From the Taps
- Fruited sour
- Zero-Proof
- Coconut water with lime
Tropical sweetness wants bubbles or Chenin’s honeyed acid: richness met with lift, not more weight.
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