tag: fig

Sometimes, life hands you lemons. Other times, though, it hands you figs.

So check it out: I go to this greasy spoon diner called Rae’s every weekend. I’m a regular. I have a “usual,” and I get slightly annoyed when someone else is sitting in my spot on the bar. (I’m short, and my favorite chair is a little bit taller than all the rest.)

But it wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that I realized that the big tree growing just to the left of the building is, in fact, a fig tree. A fact I learned by stepping (and almost slipping) on an overripe fig on the ground. I took a few photos, then a nice old lady came out to tell me that I could take some of the ripe ones if I wanted, since they would just go to waste anyway. So I did! Because despite figs being the sexiest fruit, beautiful just torn apart and eaten raw, I had a recipe I wanted to try up my sleeve.

I love a snacking cake. The kind of cake that you feel like you can eat for breakfast, or with a cup of tea, or as dessert. This cake is rustic and sturdy, requiring no creaming of butter or careful folding-in of ingredients. Just a quick mix of dry and wet ingredients, some pretty figs plopped on top, and half an hour in the oven. What a simple way to be happy.

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Posted in: cooking, desserts | Tags: almonds, baking, breakfast cake, cake, dessert, fig, fig cake, figs, food, joy the baker, joy the baker fig cake, photography, skillet cake, snacking cake, summer, sweets | 2 COMMENTS

I made and ate these pancakes at 4pm on a weekday afternoon. Afterwards, I texted the gentleman to say that I had made the best pancakes I had ever tasted, but they weren’t any left for him because I ate the whole batch. You see what this guy has to put up with?

This is another recipe from the accidental goodness chronicles. I wanted pancakes. I had figs and hazelnuts. I was short on flour so I added some cornmeal.

The figs stayed in big, ripe chunks that made some bites of these pancakes deliciously juicy. The hazelnuts provided some up-front crunch, with the cornmeal playing backup toothsomeness. They were, in the words of GLaDOS, a triumph.

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Posted in: breakfast, cooking | Tags: breakfast, brunch, cornmeal, cornmeal pancake, cornmeal pancakes, fig, fig hazelnut cornmeal pancakes, food, hazelnut, hotcakes, pancakes, single lady, single serving, vegetarian | 5 COMMENTS