Goiabada – A Simple Guava Dessert (With Yellow Guavas)

This quick goiabada recipe only needs two ingredients – fresh guavas and sugar! Delicious and fruity, this dessert is also called guava paste or guava cheese. Try it plain or on toast, yogurt, ice cream, or – yes, even cheese!

What is goiabada?

The name goiabada comes from the Portuguese word for guava, goiaba. This fruit conserve is a popular dessert throughout the Portuguese speaking world. It originated in Brazil during colonial times. Slaves cooked guavas and the abundant cane sugar in the area slowly over fires in large cauldrons.

Goiabada is a regional variant of the Portuguese marmalada, which uses quince instead of guavas. The original dish is also called quince cheese. It also is the origin for our word marmalade, even though now we use oranges to make it.

Wondering what else we got from Portugal? Here’s a fun trivia listicle.

In Goa, a state along the western coast of India, people eat perad, another name for essentially the same dish. Goa used to be a Portuguese colony as well, up until 1961, when India annexed it. In Goa, people use this guava cheese in pastries and pies.

Fun fact: the Eleventh Finance Commission of India scored Goa as having the best quality of life in the country. You can read more about this state (and its white sand beaches) here.

How do I eat goiabada?

You can make goiabada any consistency you want based on how long you simmer it. Some leave it jam-like and spread it on toast, while others cook it until it is more like fudge. You can buy canned goiabada in bricks that are thick enough to slice at places like World Market.

This thicker consistency makes it easier to use goiabada in a Romeo and Juliet, a common Brazilian dish featuring layers of goiabada and Minas cheese (you can use mozzarella if you can’t find any). This cheese is produced in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. It is quite mild and not too salty.

People also use goiabada as a filling in cakes, fried with cheese in empanadas, with crackers, and as a layer in cheesecakes or flan.

What is a conserve?

Essentially, a conserve is a way of preserving fruit with sugar. Any jam or marmalade would be an example of a conserve.

Guavas naturally contain quite a bit of pectin, which is what makes jellies, jams, and goiabada gel together.

If you try your hand at making homemade jam, depending on the type of fruit jam you are trying to make, you often need to add fruit pectin to make it gel. Fruit pectin is naturally found in pears, apples, guavas, quince, plums, gooseberries, and oranges.

Where can you buy fresh guavas?

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I tried grocery stores and health food stores to no avail, and found these beauties at Wal-Mart! I was happy to find them, but I was not able to find red guavas locally.

Can’t find any, but still curious? You can also buy guava paste pre-made, but then your kitchen won’t be full of tropical fragrance. Guavas really do have a lovely scent, although it make be a bit overpowering for some.

Goiabada Ingredients

Before you begin, you will need:

Edible Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups fresh guava flesh and peel with no seeds (I used 7 1/2 guavas for this size of recipe. After processing them, that came out to 1 cup yellow guava flesh (with no seeds) and about 1/2 cup of chopped peels. I separated the peels as some recipes call for, but you just add them back in shortly thereafter, so next time I wouldn’t bother. If you end up with a wildly different amount of usable guava than I did, just make sure you use 1 part guava to 3/4 part sugar, and it will turn out fine.)
• 1 cup plus 2 Tbsp sugar (I used granulated cane sugar)
• 1 Tbsp lemon juice (optional, but can help the goiabada gel more – before adding lemon juice, the mixture tasted like you would expect sweet guava to taste, and after adding lemon, it reminded me a bit of pineapple, although the tropical guava flavor still was very prominent)

Equipment

• A food processor or blender (or immersion blender, if you have one)
• A saucepan and stirring utensil (like one of these teak wooden spoons)
• A knife and cutting board
• A strainer or powerful cheesecloth to strain out the hard seeds (optional – I scooped out the seeds with a spoon like you would do with a pumpkin, but that method is more time intensive)

FYI – taking out the seeds is not optional, like I made it for my Melba sauce recipe. Only the way you remove them is up to you. Guava seeds could break a tooth!

How to Make Goiabada

Prep the Guavas

1. To begin, wash your guavas and cut off the ends. Scoop out the seeds inside. However you do it, your primary objective is to remove all the seeds. I scooped out the seeds with a spoon (like with a pumpkin), but you could also just chop the guavas, start cooking them to soften them, and then strain out the seeds (just make sure you get them all out!). Some recipes call for cooking the fruit for a few minutes by itself and then adding back in the peel. That seems like an unnecessary extra step to me, so there is no need to separate the peel from the flesh.

Get cooking

1. Once you have your fruit de-seeded, roughly chop any large pieces, and cook it in a saucepan over medium heat. Use a wooden spoon to break up any big chunks of fruit.
2. Next, add in the sugar and combine. At this point, it will start to look less like chunks of fruit and more like a liquid.
3. When the sugar and fruit has come to a boil, reduce the heat to keep it at a simmer. Note: As your goiabada thickens, you will need to turn the heat back up a few times to keep it at a simmer.
4. Once the mixture has simmered for about 10 minutes, the peels should be soft. Pour batches of your goiabada into a blender or food processor and blitz until smooth. (If you have an immersion blender, you could use that instead to save time.)
5. Now, pour the blended goiabada back in the pot and continue simmering until the liquid reduces and the consistency is in line with how you want it. I cooked mine for 20 more minutes (for a total of 30 minutes). If you are going to add lemon juice to help thicken the goiabada, now is when you will add it. Mine partially gelled, but was still a bit jammy, so cook longer if you want it more solid and less if you want it more like a jam.

Place the goiabada in molds to set

1. While it’s cooking, you can grease whatever dishes you will be using as molds if desired. I used a spritz of cooking spray and spread it out with a paper towel.
2. When the goiabada has thickened enough, pour it into your dishes and let it cool. Once cool, cover and put in the refrigerator to finish setting, or serve room temperature. Try goiabada on its own, on toast, or with layers of cheese as a Romeo and Juliet. Enjoy!

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Variations on this Goiabada recipe

People make this dessert at various consistencies. By increasing the ratio of fruit to sugar, you end up with more of a marmalade (still delicious, but eaten much differently).

If you can find red guavas, they are the traditional choice for this dessert. In my part of the world, at this time of year, I felt lucky to find any guavas.

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I hope you like this goiabada recipe!