I live in the middle of Oklahoma. We don't have an abundance of fresh figs. Gary and I love love them, though, so when I saw my fellow French Friday with Dorie cook, Andrea at The Kitchen Lioness, had baked a fig walnut cake I wanted figs and I wanted fig cake and I wanted it immediately! Alas, I had to wait until figs made an appearance in my grocery. When I found them at Forward Foods, a wonderful specialty shop in Oklahoma City, I hurried home to make Andrea's fig walnut cake.
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| Fig Walnut Cake |
I pronounce it a huge success! The cake is basic and simple to make. You add ground fresh walnuts and walnut pieces to the batter and Andrea stresses they should be fresh walnuts but I used all my luck finding the figs and had none left to help with fresh walnuts so I had to use packaged grocery store nuts. While I hope to have fresh walnuts and fresh figs together one of these days I was happy with what I produced.
I will say using fig preserves as a topping with a touch of whipped cream makes all the difference. The flavor of the figs in the cake is subtle and the preserves help highlight the figgyness.
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| Homemade Fig Preserves |
My lovely sister-in-law in Memphis has a fig tree and gave me enough figs to make 6 pints of preserves. They are our new favorite jelly!
Lately I'm on a roll with cakes, this one and a nectarine upside down cake, but Andrea has so many great looking cakes on her blog that I want to keep baking. Unfortunately my jeans have requested a cake free week or two. I'm taking it under consideration.....
Beckett and his momma would happily taste test any Gigi cakes :). Guy and I discovered we love figs too when we were at the bed and breakfast for my birthday. They served figs with fresh goat cheese and honey - unbelievably good!
ReplyDeleteGuyla, This cake sounds absolutely heavenly…love that you used your fig jam as a topping! I’ve been reading all of Andrea’s posts…love all the cakes she’s been making. Yours looks so moist and delicious…Lovely!
ReplyDeleteYour success is the best compliment of all (now I said it twice)!
ReplyDeleteYour fig walnut cake and the homemade fig preserves look absolutely perfect and delicious and wonderful!
Thank you for taking the time to let me know about your post, you made my day and if you have no objections, I will post the link to your post on my facebook page - together with Marlise´s from "doubletroublekitchen" who baked the plum cake and blogged about it.
Have a good Tuesday! And thanks again for trying out the recipe and letting me know about it!
What a gorgeous cake - such fabulous flavours.
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