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Fig Filling for Layer Cake
One pound figs, chopped fine, one cup sugar, juice of one lemon, water; cook slowly till thick, spread while warm.
— Mrs. I. R. Fitchett
A three-ingredient fruit filling of the kind that shows up in nearly every community cookbook of the period. The only vague element is the water, and the fix is to add it in small amounts rather than guess at a total.
- The waterNo quantity is given because none is fixed: start with about 1/2 cup for a pound of figs and add a spoonful at a time if the pan threatens to catch. The mixture should stay thick enough to hold a line when a spoon is drawn through it.
- Which figsAlmost certainly dried figs rather than fresh; a pound of fresh figs would cook down to a thin jam rather than a spreadable filling. Any soft dried fig will do; snip off the hard stem ends before chopping, and a food processor pulsed a few times does the chopping faster than a knife.
- Cook slowly means slowlyFig purée is dense and scorches on the bottom before the top shows any sign of it. Low heat, a heavy pan, and near-constant stirring for 10 to 15 minutes until the mass pulls away from the sides.
- Spread while warmThis is the hinge. Cooled fig filling stiffens to a paste that will tear the crumb of a cake layer; warm, it spreads with the back of a spoon. If it has set, reheat gently with a teaspoon of water.
- YieldA pound of figs with a cup of sugar makes a generous quantity, on the order of 2 1/2 to 3 cups; more than enough for a two- or three-layer 8- or 9-inch cake. Halve it if you want only a single layer.
- LemonLemons vary in size and sharpness, so "the juice of one lemon" is an elastic measure; taste before adding all of it, since the filling should be tart against a plain butter cake, not sour.
- KeepingRefrigerated in a covered jar it holds a week or more. Bring it back to warm before using.
Fig fillings belong to the era when dried fruit was the reliable pantry sweet — figs, dates and raisins kept for months and were shipped long distances in pressed blocks or strings, so a cook could make a fruit filling in midwinter with nothing in the garden. The formula here is the standard one: chopped dried fruit, sugar, an acid to brighten it, and just enough water to let it cook down to a spreadable paste. A similar fig paste filled the commercial fig bar biscuits that became popular in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and household versions like this one sat beside date and raisin fillings in the layer-cake chapters of church and community books for decades. Named attributions of this kind are typical of the genre: such volumes were commonly compiled from contributions by the women of a congregation or town.