Stuffed Figs
Remove the inside of steamed or fresh figs and mix the part removed with chopped nuts moistened with a syrup of sugar and tart fruit-juice (cooked or uncooked). Roll in sugar and serve.
Cream two cups of brown sugar with one of butter. Add one cup of water, four eggs, three and three-fourths cups of flour, one teaspoon each of soda and grated nutmeg, and two of cinnamon. Have ready, chopped and floured, one pound of figs cut in fine strips lengthwise, and three cups chopped raisins, adding these just before baking.
To two cups of sugar add a generous half cup of butter, one of milk, four (scant) of flour (in which two teaspoons of baking-powder have been sifted) and four eggs. Flour two cups chopped figs and add to batter just before placing in pans to bake.
Three separate recipes have been run together under one heading: the stuffed figs themselves, then a dark spiced fig cake, then a plain fig layer cake. Read them as three, not as one set of instructions.
- Where the recipes divideThe first ends at "Roll in sugar and serve." The second runs from "Cream two cups of brown sugar" to "just before baking." The third begins "To two cups of sugar." Nothing in the second or third belongs to the stuffed figs.
- Steamed or fresh figsDried figs of the period were leathery, and steaming over water was the usual way to plump them; steam until pliable. Fresh figs need no such treatment; halve them, scoop the pulp with a small spoon and leave the skin shell intact.
- The syrupNo proportions are given. A workable ratio is 2 parts sugar to 1 part tart juice (lemon, sour cherry, currant), warmed only until the sugar dissolves. Add it a teaspoon at a time to the mashed pulp and nuts; the filling should hold its shape, not slump.
- Oven temperatureNeither cake gives one. The dark, fruit-heavy second batter suits a moderate oven, around 325F, in a loaf or tube pan; the lighter third batter around 350F. Both are large batters, so judge pan size by volume and test with a skewer in the centre.
- Soda with no obvious acidThe second recipe contains no sour milk or molasses, so the acid for the teaspoon of soda would have come from the molasses still present in period brown sugar. Modern brown sugar is refined white sugar with molasses added back and is milder; dark brown is the closer match.
- Flouring the fruitTossing the chopped figs and raisins in flour, and adding them at the last moment, is what keeps them from sinking to the bottom. Shake off the excess or the batter turns dry and dense.
- Cutting the figsA pound of figs cut in fine strips lengthwise is stiff work if they are dried. Oiled scissors work better than a knife, and the hard stem nub is worth removing, as it never softens in baking.
- YieldThe stuffed figs are a confection, served as a sweetmeat. Both cake batters are large; the second in particular will fill a big tube or loaf pan, and the third will need more than two shallow layers.
Figs reached American kitchens mainly as pressed dried cakes from Smyrna, and stuffed figs belonged to the late-Victorian and Edwardian fashion for home-made "confections" — dates, prunes and figs opened, filled with nuts and rolled in sugar, served with coffee or packed in boxes as gifts. The technique required no candy thermometer and no boiling sugar, and it turns up in temperance cookbooks, domestic-science pamphlets and fruit-focused collections like this one, where fruit sweets were promoted as wholesome against bought candy. The two cakes reflect the other half of the fig trade: by the 1890s California growers were pushing Mission figs hard, and recipe books of the decade duly show figs substituting for the citron, currants and raisins of older English fruit cakes. Flouring the fruit before folding it in is an older baking habit still worth keeping.