Spiced Fig Squares

I make no apologies for posting two consecutive bakes based on oats - flapjacks, and this type of fruit-filled square, are quick to assemble and bake and we all know oats are healthy, don't we?

I based my recipe on these Date Squares from Joy of Baking, but I used figs for the filling and scaled the recipe down to fit a smaller baking tin - 20cm(8") square. I also used spelt flour instead of wheatflour in the dough.

Ingredients
250g soft dried figs
150mls water
1 1/2 teaspoons mixed spice*
2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses
160g porridge oats
100g spelt flour
100g soft light brown sugar
scant 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
180g butter

*I used Waitrose Signature Spice mix, which is predominantly cinnamon but also contains ginger,  nutmeg, cardamom, allspice, star anise, black pepper, tangerine oil and cloves.

Method
Cut the figs into small pieces, either with scissors, as I did, or in a food processor. Put into a small saucepan with the water and bring to the boil. Simmer for about 5 minutes until the water is absorbed. Stir in the spice and pomegranate molasses.
Pre-heat the oven to 180C and line the base and sides of a 20cm (8") square baking tin with baking parchment.
Put the oats, flour, sugar, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a large bowl and rub in the butter (or use a food processor to mix in cold butter in pulses until the mixture is crumbly and just beginning to come together).

Put roughly 2/3 of the dough into the baking tin, spread evenly then press down firmly.
Dot small heaps of the fruit mix over the dough, and use a knife or back of a spoon to spread out into an even layer, right to the edges of the tin.
Crumble over the rest of the dough mix and again, spread evenly. Press down gently to firm the mixture.
Bake for about 40 minutes, until golden brown. Cool in the tin, marking into squares or bars before it cools completely.

These spiced fig squares were a little crumblier than I really like, although they did firm up a bit after the first day. The spiced fig filling was delicious, although I would use a bit more spice if I made them again, and cut the figs into smaller pieces in my mini-processor, rather than snip into pieces with scissors.

Fig Flapjacks

Isn't it strange that sometimes you spend ages thinking about flavour combinations before you cook, and still things don't work out well, and at other times you throw things together with almost no thought, and make something really delicious? The latter scenario is what happened with this batch of flapjacks.

I wanted to use a pack of partially re-hydrated figs, which was getting near the use-by date. The figs were really soft and sticky and when I looked through my 'add-ins' storage box to find something else to use, to balance both their sweetness and softness, I came across a tub of candied citrus peel. Then I opened a cupboard to get out the golden syrup and had to move a bottle of pomegranate molasses, and thought 'why not?'

The slightly sour note from the pomegranate molasses and the citrus notes really worked well to offset the sweetness of the figs and sugars, and this was one of the tastiest batches of flapjacks I've ever made.

Melt together 160g butter, 40g golden syrup, 30g pomegranate molasses and 100g light muscovado sugar. This can be done in a pan on the hob or in a large bowl in the microwave. It doesn't need to get very hot - you just want the butter to melt. Stir to blend everything together then mix in 230g rolled oats, 70g chopped dried figs and 30g candied citrus peel. Tip the mixture into a 20 x 20cm  (8" x 8") baking tin, lined with baking parchment, spread and level, and press down firmly. Bake at 180C for 30 minutes. Mark into bars while still warm, but cool completely before removing from the tin.

Fig, Chocolate and Ginger Panforte

This marks the true start of my Christmas baking, as Panforte is something which keeps for ages if well wrapped or in an airtight container. According to which source of information you choose, it will keep for anything from 2 weeks to several months, which is just as well, as it's so rich that it will only get eaten a sliver at a time. It's the sort of thing that you eat with your evening coffee, or that might appeal to someone who prefers confectionary to desserts.

Although Panforte is something I've been meaning to try for years, what prompted me to make it now was two of this month's cooking challenges. We Should Cocoa wants participants to pair chocolate and figs, and AlphaBakes is using the letter X this month, and will be accepting 'X = Xmas' recipes!

Panforte is an Italian fruit and nut cake, original from Siena, and traditionally only eaten at Christmas. As explained in the link, because the basis of the cake is a boiled syrup made from honey and sugar, the texture of panforte is more like nougat or toffee than what we usually expect from 'cake'. Chocolate is a relatively modern addition, although most recipes nowadays contain at least a little cocoa.

I decided to go for a double chocolate version, and to also add figs and crystallised ginger, as in this recipe. This was one of the first recipes I found when looking for 'fig and chocolate' recipes, but as I researched further, I realised that it might not be the best recipe to use. Many of the more traditional recipes used a variety of old-fashioned spices such as cloves, pepper and nutmeg as well as cinnamon, and most used a much smaller quantity of flour. Panforte is also often baked on a base of edible rice paper (or communion wafers), which would have made it easier to remove from the baking tin before the days of non-stick bakeware.

The problem was, the more I researched, the more confused I got about which recipe to actually use - some cooked the dried fruits in water, or added wine, or boiled the sugar and honey with butter too. Some recipes made huge cakes - suitable for feeding dozens of people for several weeks, and some recipes made something which was more like a refrigerator cake - no cooking at all!

In the end, I decided to base the recipe on the basic ingredients required to make an 8" diameter (20cm) cake, in a recipe from one of my own cookbooks, but to vary the added ingredients according to my instincts in order to make something like the original fig, chocolate and ginger version. I used the spice mix from my basic recipe too, as it seemed in line with several other recipes, although I used nutmeg instead of mace.

The one thing I did differently from almost all the recipes I found was to leave the added chocolate in large chunks; I knew it would melt in the heat of the syrup, but hoped that little pockets of richer chocolate would be left in the finished cake.

Ingredients
200g blanched almonds
200g dried, but soft, figs
60g crystallised ginger
100g plain chocolate
50g plain flour
50g cocoa
zest of one small orange
1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg (freshly grated)
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon cinnamon
100g runny honey
100g caster sugar
Rice paper - optional

Method
First toast the almonds lightly in a 180C oven for 10 minutes, then cool and chop coarsely. Reduce the oven temperature to 160C
Grease a loose-bottomed 8" sandwich tin, and line the sides with baking parchment. Then cut a sheet of rice paper to fit the base (or use more baking parchment).
Cut the figs and ginger into pieces about the same size as the chopped nuts.
Mix the flour, cocoa, orange zest and spices in a bowl, the add the figs, ginger, almonds and coarsely chopped chocolate. Mix to evenly coat the fruit and nuts in the flour mixture.
Gently heat the sugar and honey in a medium sized pan, until the sugar has dissolved. Then bring to the boil and heat until the temperature reaches 115-120C on a sugar thermometer. Many recipes say boil for three minutes, so without a sugar thermometer, this is what I'd suggest.
Remove the pan from the heat and add all the other ingredients; you'll need to work quickly to mix everything together and will look initially as if there isn't enough syrup, but it will eventually come together. When everything is evenly mixed, tip the ball of ingredients into the centre of the baking tin. Use the back of a wet spoon to spread out the dough evenly to the edges of the tin.
Bake for 40 minutes.
Cool in the tin, then remove the baking parchment and store in an airtight tin, wrapped in foil.
Sift over icing sugar before serving. I have the feeling that this stage will need repeating at intervals, as the sugar dissolves.

The smell of spices, chocolate and orange, as this baked, was amazing. Once it was cold, I cut out the small sliver shown in the photograph, for research purposes, and it was very chewy, reminiscent of nougat. The chocolate and spices blended well with the figs and nuts but the best part was getting a nugget of crystallised ginger to chew on, which gave an extra burst of flavour in the mouth. Looking at the photo, I may have been successful in getting separate areas of chocolate too - there's definitely a darker patch in the middle!

We Should Cocoa (rules here) is hosted by Choclette of Chocolate Log Blog; she often has guest hosts, but this month is running the challenge herself.

AlphaBakes (rules here) is hosted alternately by Caroline, of Caroline Makes, and Ros, of The More Than Occasional Baker. Caroline is this month's host, choosing X, to make things easier for us during the rest of the year!.

Fig, Orange and Star Anise Tea Loaf

This recipe comes from Ruby Tandoh's first book 'Crumb' which has just been published. Ruby was a finalist in last year's Great British Bake Off TV programme, and now writes a regular baking column for the Guardian newspaper, which appears in the Saturday 'Cook' section. This extract of recipes was published recently in their Weekend magazine.

I'm not totally enamoured of her style, and she's certainly no replacement for the much missed Dan Lepard, but the odd recipe catches my eye, and this was one of them. I think it was the unusual mix of flavours, something that Dan specialised in, that attracted me, and the use of dried figs, which I love, but rarely see recipes for.

In the event, I didn't have enough figs in the store cupboard, so used 2/3 figs and 1/3 dried pears, but I don't think this affected the final flavour much, as figs have a very strong flavour whereas pears are quite bland when used in a cake.

This is a tea loaf which doesn't use any fat, but I think it would have benefitted from adding some. The blend of flavours worked really well (Ruby describes the flavour as "floral, citrus, liquorice, spice and caramel, and yet not definitely any one of those things"), and the fragrance was amazing, but the loaf was let down by the texture of the crumb. It was quite dense and stodgy, although the dried figs kept the overall texture moist enough.

I'll definitely be trying this combination of ingredients in a cake batter soon, in a bid to improve the eating quality!

Fig, Pistachio and Honey Balls

These could almost be considered guilt-free Christmas treats - no dairy, no gluten, no refined sugar, no added fat. There's just a tasty mixture of dried fruit, nuts and honey, with orange zest, orange flower water and cinnamon for flavouring. The recipe comes from the December 2013 issue of Good Food magazine, but isn't available on the website yet.

Here's a brief overview of the recipe - it isn't difficult, but you do need at least a mini-chopper, if not a full sized food processor.  My mini-chopper was big enough to process all the dried fruit in one batch.

200g soft dried figs and 100g dates are processed to a purée with 40g of well-flavoured honey (I used wild thyme), 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon, the finely grated zest of an orange and 2 teaspoons of orange flower water, then 100g chopped pistachios and 50g of chopped blanched almonds are worked into the paste. The mixture is rolled into cherry-sized balls and placed on baking parchment to be chilled. I found it easier to roll the very sticky paste by chilling it first, and got the recommended 25 balls out of the mixture.

There is an option in the recipe to roll the fruit balls in cocoa before serving, but I was taking them to a dinner party where one of the guests could not eat chocolate, so decided not to do this. A tempered dark chocolate covering might be a tasty, sophisticated finish too. For presentation I put each ball into a petit four case before filling a shallow box with a single layer.

I'm entering this into this month's Tea Time Treats challenge, the last to be hosted by Kate, of What Kate Baked. The theme she has chosen is one which fits well into December - Festive Foodie Gifts. The rules for the Tea Time Treats challenge can be found here, on co-host Karen's blog (Lavender and Lovage). Karen will be carrying on setting TTT challenges in the new year.

Apple, Fig and Almond Pie

This pie was a last minute idea, to use up the last windfall cooking apple, and to make a change from fruit crumble. I was in a rush to get it into the oven before the F1 Grand Prix started, so decided to go with a free-form pie, as it wouldn't matter too much if there was any pastry shrinkage. I did have time to rest the pastry after it was mixed, but I don't think it was entirely  necessary in these circumstances.

I added chopped dried figs and ground almonds to the apples to soak up any excess juice and provide a bit more texture and flavour to the filling. I also made the basic shortcrust pastry with SR flour as I like the soft, crumbly result it gives. Using lard in the pastry also adds to the 'shortness'.

Ingredients

250g SR flour

60g lard

65g salted butter

cold water, to mix

1 large cooking apple

1 large eating apple - or more, see note at end

about 10 dried figs, each cut into six pieces
zest and juice of half a lemon
2 tablespoons ground almonds
3 tablespoons sugar, plus extra for sprinkling on top

Method
Rub the butter and lard into the flour, and use enough cold water to make a soft but not sticky dough. (I find it easier to rub in the fat if it has warmed up a bit from the fridge temperature.)  Gather the dough into a ball, knead lightly, wrap in clingfilm and rest in the fridge for 15 minutes.

Prepare filling - peel core and slice the apples and put into a bowl. Add the zest and the juice of half a lemon, and mix to coat the apple slices. Mix in the sugar, ground almonds and fig pieces.

On a floured surface, roll the pastry into a rough circle shape about 40cm (16") across, and transfer to a baking sheet. 

Heap the filling into the centre, leaving a 8-10cm margin all round.

Fold the margin of pastry up over the filling, gathering any excess into folds. This should leave a small area in the centre not covered with pastry - if you have too much pastry, break away a little from the edges to leave a hole in the centre.

Brush the pastry with water and sprinkle thickly with sugar.
Bake in a preheated oven (190C) for about 45 minutes, until the pastry is golden brown.

Serve warm, with cream or Greek yogurt.

I'm happy that I judged the added figs and ground almonds correctly - there were no excess juices to make the pastry base soggy. The figs added a lovely flavour and texture to the apples, and the lemon could be tasted too.

Note - You can see from the cut pie that the filling is not very deep. This amount of pastry could easily have taken more filling - at least another apple - but I had to go with what I had available.

Flapjack

A while back I made these Fig and Pumpkin Seed Bars. Although I really liked the flavour, I didn't like the basic bar recipe. I eventually got around to trying the mixture of dried figs, sour cherries, pumpkin seeds and walnuts in my usual flapjack recipe. This was a big improvement, as my flapjacks are perfect (in my eyes!) - thick and chewy, as I like them. I would like to incorporate some maple syrup in future, although I know from experience that this alters the texture of the flapjack.



This is my basic flapjack recipe, which produces a thick chewy flapjack which isn't at all crumbly.

For these flapjacks I used 90g dried figs, 70g dried sour cherries, 40g pumpkin seeds and 50g walnuts. I chopped the figs, walnuts and dried cherries into smaller pieces, adding the pumpkin seeeds at the end so that only a few were chopped and most remained whole. This could be done in a processor, with brief pulses, but I used a mezzaluna.

Ingredients

250g butter
100g golden syrup
150g light muscovado sugar
350g rolled (porridge) oats
150g dried fruit, nuts and seeds of choice - chopped where necessary

Method

Fully line a 30 x 20cm x 2.5cm deep (12" x 8" x 1" deep) baking tin with parchment, ensuring that the parchment comes up the sides of the tin, so that none of the flapjack mix will touch the tin. I do this with one piece of paper, pressed and folded into the corners.

Melt the butter, syrup and sugar together, either in a large bowl in the microwave, or in a large saucepan on the hob, on a low heat.

Stir in the oats and dried fruit mix. Mix well until the wet mix is evenly distributed.

Press the mixture into the tin as evenly as possible, then bake at 180C for 25 - 30 minutes until just turning golden. If you prefer a crisper flapjack, bake for a few minutes more.

Remove from oven, allow to cool for 10 minutes then mark into bars. Allow to cool completely before removing bars from the tin.

To make smaller batches, use 2/3 of the quantities given in a 20cm (8") square tin, or half quantities in a 18cm (7") tin.

Work in Progress

fig rolls and lemon cookies

With a batch of brownies available if all else failed, today I had time to work on a recipe that I'm trying to perfect. Since seeing this fabulous photo of Lemon Burst Cookies last month, I'm determined to make something similar from scratch. For one thing, I don't even know whether the cake mixes we get here in the UK are the same as American ones, for another, I always have the basic ingredients available for baking, but buying a cake mix involves remembering to put it on the shopping list and thirdly, I've never seen a cake mix that doesn't have chemicals and cheap fats in, which I don't use when baking from scratch.

Reading the labels on cake mix boxes (online) wasn't as helpful as I'd hoped, as many boxes contain frostings too, but the ingredients listings aren't separated out. So as a starting point, I decided to assume that a 18oz cake mix would contain equal weights of SR flour and sugar, like many cakes. I decided to use 20% cornflour to give a more tender texture. Then, I added all the additions used in the recipe in the link, plus some natural yellow colour. This made a very liquid batter which need more flour to make a cookie dough. Even then the dough spread too far, too fast - the balls of dough didn't even hold their shape on the baking sheet. The resulting cookies were very tasty, and had a nice cakey texture, although they were too sweet, so I knew I was on the right track.

Today, I looked through my Cookies recipe book to find something that looked as if it had the right texture after baking, and compare it with my first attempt. this recipe used a creamed mix of almost equal amounts of butter and sugar with double the quantitiy of flour and an egg yolk mixed in to bind. I added lemon zest, lemon extract and natural colour instead of the flavours in the recipe. I again used about 20% cornflour to keep it tender and added a little bicarbonate of soda to ensure a cakey texture. The recipe I chose gave a raw dough that was too dry, but adding a little lemon juice soon rectified that. The cookies held their shape and baked to a good texture, but the raw dough balls didn't 'hold' the icing sugar coating, and it was all absorbed during cooking. I sprinkled on icing sugar after baking but it doesn't give the same effect. I'm not sure how to proceed from this point, as what I made were very good cookies in their own right - they just didn't look correct.

I also decided to make some homemade Fig Rolls (Fig Newtons), which my husband had suggested, to use up a bag of dried figs. I used this recipe, although I didn't have any wholemeal flour, so used all white. I also used the leftover egg white from the lemon cookie making, plus a little water, instead of egg yolks. I was happy doing this as several recipes I looked at used egg white to mix the cookie dough. The resulting fig rolls were pretty good, but with the benefit of hindsight, I rolled the dough too thin. I also think both the dough and the fig filling would be improved with some additional flavouring - orange zest, perhaps or some cinnamon. So again, this is a work in progress, although not as far to go as with the lemon cookies!

Fig and Pumpkin Seed Bars

A biscuit recipe from Nigel Slater, in his weekly column in the Observer newspaper, caught my eye recently, for the unusual combination of flavouring ingredients used. As well as the eponymous figs and pumpkin seeds, dried cherries and walnuts are used, plus some ground almonds in the base oat mix and maple syrup in the binding mix.

In his preamble to the recipe, Nigel describes his quest to make a muesli style biscuit which is crunchy, yet still sticky like a flapjack. I like my flapjacks thick and chewy, not biscuity, so wasn't sure how I would like the texture of this Fig and Pumpkin Seed Bar, but decided it was worth a try for the flavours alone.

The only change I made to the recipe was to use pecans instead of walnuts; if there were walnuts in my storecupboard, then I couldn't find them! I chopped the figs in the mini-processor first, to the size of raisins, then added the rest of the fruit, nuts and seeds and pulsed briefly until the nuts were chopped. This reduced the figs, cherries and pecan nuts to quite small pieces but left the pumpkin seeds more or less intact - I didn't want the biscuits to be too crumbly. After baking, I cooled the mixture with some weights on top, as Nigel stressed the need to press them down while cooling.



The final result was a thin oat bar which is crunchy, flavoursome and very sweet, but to me is neither a crisp biscuit nor a chewy flapjack. I really liked the flavours together but didn't really like the texture. I think I would prefer using the same combination of nuts, fruits, seeds and maple syrup in my usual flapjack recipe, or in a soft cookie recipe.