Weekend Plate: When Life Gives You Fresh Figs...

By Carlene Helble

I’m lucky. I’ve just been sent back to university with an entire bag of fresh from the tree figs courtesy of the Grandparents. Note: I just saw figs at Wegmans priced at three for two dollars, hence I now have about twenty dollars worth of figs on the counter.

What exactly do you do with an entire bag of something you have only known to occupy the space within a Fig Newton? After searching recipe books and Google-ing, I stumbled upon a recipe (from the beautiful Sugar & Spice blog) for fresh fig bread. A quick bread of sorts, fig bread is very similar to your average banana bread.

With some minor alterations (whole wheat flour, less sugar) to the original recipe, I ‘dietetic’-ed the recipe for a salivary stimulating snack.

Modified Ingredients:

3 eggs

2 cups sugar

2 cups ripe figs, mashed

3/4 cup vegetable oil

3 cups flour (make half your grains whole! 1 ½ C regular flour, the other half whole wheat flour)

2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

Directions:

Beat eggs; add sugar and beat well. Add the mashed figs and vegetable oil.

Sift together flour, soda, salt and cinnamon. Beat well.Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour in greased and floured loaf pans.

Makes 2 large or 3 small loaves.