Sunday, August 10, 2008

Fig walnut bread

Today, I saw a basket of figs at the farmer's market, so I made pizza and a fig walnut bread with the figs.

I love love love figs. (But I suppose you knew that from the title of this blog.) Their season is so fleeting, it makes me want to covet them even more when they are around.

I found the fig bread recipe in the Mercury News. I saw it last year when fig season was headed out, so filed the recipe for "later" and just came across it yesterday when I was looking for another recipe. Ah, serendipity. . .

This is the recipe. As is my usual habit, I didn't follow the recipe to a T.
*There is absolutely no reason you need 1.5 cups of sugar. I used 1/2 cup of snob brown sugar, and it is plenty.
*I cut the oil in half and used yogurt as the rest of the filler. It seemed to work fine.
*I freshly grated nutmeg and some of the cinnamon.
*I also added freshly ground ginger--but evidently, not enough, since I can barely taste it.
*Not sure if I was supposed to do this, but I folded in the sherry with the batter. It gives the figs a nice brandied flavor.

It's quite good. A bit crumbly (so no pics, alas), but yummy.