Friday, November 30, 2012

Homemade Fig Bars

 

As you may have noticed if you’ve ever read any of my Cooking Adventures, I wing it quite a bit.  Most the time things come out wonderfully (not always) but I know it might be confusing for a ‘how to’ type post, when I cook and bake this way.  I’m trying to get better and at least remember what I do while cooking so I can share with you all.  The point is, you can wing it, too.  Don’t have 1/2Cup chocolate chips but do have some M&Ms?  Why not?  I wrote ½ to 1 Cup Sugar?  Go with your gut!  It’ll be fine.  Most the time.


Gigi and Pop-Pop get figs at their home.  Fresh, beautiful figs.  But I didn’t know what to do with figs.  I mean, I know you can eat them but it just seemed weird.  So when the boys and I went to a playdate at “Auntie Mary’s” house and she offered homemade fig bars I had to have the recipe.  My children love Fig Newton’s and they have become a special treat when visiting Gigi and Pop-Pop.  They devoured Auntie Mary’s.  Mary sent me the recipe (from Dig This Chick, whom I love!) but it seemed kinda complicated. So we made a date for the kids to play and the Mamas to make fig bars.  The recipe she had called for dried figs but we switched it up and made it work and they turned out delicious. But they did seem to take quite a bit of effort and lots of ingredients; some of which I don’t have or really buy regularly.  They were so yummy and my kids loved them but they were more effort and time than I wanted/could to invest into a regular snack.



Gigi gave me more figs and I went on a quest to figure out a way to get homemade (somewhat healthy) fig bars for my kids. Here’s what I came up with!



 
Filling:
You’ll Need Fresh Figs (dry will do, I’m sure but I’m not sure how J)
Sugar
Water
I throw about 1 cup Sugar into 2 cups of water and boiled with the chopped fresh figs and mashed them up.  Remember how I said I’m not great with ‘how-to’s’?  Well, this is what I mean.  I don’t know how many figs I had but you’ll want to change this up depending on what you have.  You want to end result to be like a jam or jelly texture.

For the crust:
1 cup sugar
½ cup butter (1 stick) room temp/softened
½ tsp baking soda
2 cups flour (I used 1 cup wheat and 1 cup white)
1 egg beaten
Dash of vanilla (remember that whole ‘bad at remembering what I do’ thing…sorry!)

 
Preheat oven to 350.

Cream sugar and butter.  In separate bowl mix dry ingredients baking soda and flour.  Mix half the beaten egg in (I put the splash of vanilla in here), then half the butter/sugar mixture, then the rest of the egg and the last of the butter sugar mixture.  I had to use my hands to start working this dough together.  Once the dough is formed you can proceed as you wish. 

I did both tradtitional sandwich type bars and ‘rolls’.  I rolled out portions of the dough. For the sandwiched I placed the bottom on my parchment lined paper and spread the fig filling and then added another similar size optional (already rolled out) and placed it on top and baked for approx. 20 minutes. 
 
 
 
 
 
I rolled out a piece and placed filling on it then rolled the dough up into a log.  I cut cookies from the log and baked them for about 13 minutes.  Every oven is different so just make sure to check on them!  They were a huge hit with the boys (and Hubs-To-Be)!

 

2 comments:

  1. They look yummy! I love the "roll" idea for a change or pace. I have all the ingredients and have been meaning to make them but have not had the energy since I got sick. :)

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    Replies
    1. With a better knife the rolls might come out more 'roll' like :) But they worked. :) K asked for a 'roll up' fig bar each time. He liked them best :)

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