My father and I, we have one HUGE difference: he LOVES figs – even though it is strictly forbidden for his diabetes diet, whereas I, well, I hate figs! Ok maybe hate is a bit too big word.. But I simply don’t like it. It is not the taste that I don’t like, it’s the texture and most importantly, it’s because fig is always too soft! But me hating fig does not mean that I cannot use it in my recipes for my guests. Especially when it’s the short season for figs and when it comes from Turkey all the way to Finland. So, when I was invited to a nice dinner party by a friend, I decided to try a fig recipe for dessert. Incidentally, I had bought a heart-shaped silicone cake mould in that morning from Ikea (heart-shape? ok i know that it’s quite lame, but I liked it somehow!) and this cake was the perfect opportunity to try the mould right away!

But how would I choose the best figs?? I had never ever bought them myself before! So in the middle of K-market’s fruit section, I immediately called my father and asked how to choose the best figs. First did not understand what I was talking about. Then he began to laugh and from 2500 km away, he continued to tell me about it using the description of an “unironed shirt”?! More confused than before, I chose 4 figs that would fit the description and actually the figs turned out to be good ones.

And so I baked this lovely cake and took it with me in the evening to the dinner party – everyone loved it. The only challenge was to find the best way to cut it since it was a heart shape but we figured it out. Well, it was so delicious that after the first bite it did not matter how we cut the pieces actually.. I personally took a little piece that did not involve any fig, but now when I think of it, I regret that – I really wonder how baked fig would taste.. Well, maybe I can bake it one more time before the fig season is over.

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Ingredients:

115 gr butter (melted)
1.5 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup honey
4 figs
200 gr fresh raspberries
Confectioner’s sugar (for decoration – optional)

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1. Preheat the oven to 175C.

2. Melt the butter in a pan.

3. In a little bowl or a deep plate, put the flour, baking powder and salt and mix them using a fork or spoon. Put it aside.

4. In a separate little bowl, grate 1 whole lemon to prepare the zest (do not grate too deeply, avoid grating the white part after the skin). Put it aside.

5. Squeeze the lemon to prepare the juice and put it aside.

6. In a large bowl, put the eggs and sugar and beat them using a hand mixer (or simply a whisk) together until it gets light and fluffy.

7. To the egg-sugar mixture, add melted butter, vanilla extract, honey, lemon zest and lemon juice and beat them with the mixer, until you get a smooth texture.

8. To this mixture, add the flour-baking powder-salt mixture that you prepared in step 3. Beat it as you gradually add this flour mixture. Continue beating until you have a smooth and consistent batter.

9. Butter and flour the cake mould and pour the batter in it. Drop it gently onto the counter a few times, and also shake it gently a few times, so that the air bubbles trapped inside while pouring the batter can pop out away.

10. Slice the figs in thin pieces. Unfortunately I forgot to take the picture of the individual slices, sorry! But to give you the idea by words, I just cut out the two ends of the figs and first them in 4 pieces, then to thinner pieces. I did not peel the figs.

11. Put the fig slices and raspberries (no need to cut the raspberries of course) in the batter as you like. I put some of the figs horizontally, some vertically and then I added the raspberries in the spaces left. I put them quite deep but not until the end of the mould.

12. When your cake decoration is ready, put it in the oven and bake it until a knife stuck inside the cake comes out clean. Mine took about 40 minutes.

13. When your cake is ready take it out of the oven and let it cool for a while before taking it out of the mould. You can serve it like this or you can sift some confectioner’s sugar on it, it is up to you – I served with sugar.

It’s that’s simple and fun! Now rush to the market and buy some figs before the season is over!