Figs are more than just dried fruit in my life.
Those of you who have been reading my blog here since the beginning (oh hello, 2008!), may recall posts where I would talk about my "friend" Josh. A few perceptive readers actually called me out on this in the comments. I insisted Josh and I were just friends (let's be honest, it was mostly Josh insisting), and as such when we'd go out, we never went on dates. My dad started referring to them as figs. You know, like another dried fruit. Since then, fig recipes have always had significance in our lives. Which explains this delicious, decadent, dairy-free, gluten-free and vegan-friendly Sticky Fig Pudding Cake recipe in honour of this week of love.
The rest of the story is that somewhere in the summer of 2009 Josh and I transitioned from going on figs to going out on actual dates, and in 2012 we got married.
As for this cake. It's a delicious take on the more traditional and more popular Sticky Date Pudding. For those of us who aren't British or Australian (or wherever else they refer to cake as pudding), this is in fact cake. Just a really moist cake. And you can make it with figs as I've written it, or dates or apricots. You could probably even do it with raisins, but let's be honest - no raisin ever made a dessert more delicious.
It seems pudding is commonly used to refer to dessert in general. There's also a dessert called Figgy Pudding, which is actually a date and fig cake funnily enough. Also confusing is that pudding can refer to a savoury part of the meal. Feel free to offer a better explanation in the comments because it's all very confusing to me.
What really, really matters here is that you can make any one of your favourite desserts healthfully by switching just a few ingredients. Whereas a typical 'pudding' cake would have white sugar, all-purpose white flour, cream or (gasp!) condensed milk, you can easily make this with real food ingredients, and that's what I have done here. What I loved extra about this cake is that it's so very moist and gooey, a rare thing for gluten-free baking.
And so, here I have for you a delicious cake that you should eat on your own, or with the ones you love most. Love is, after all, a sweet thing. Figs. Dates. And everything after.
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Yield: 8 servings
- ⅓ cup toasted chopped pecans, divided
- ¾ cup coconut milk
- ¾ cup water
- ¼ cup coconut oil
- ¼ cup coconut sugar
- 200 grams coarsely chopped figs (about 1.5 cups roughly chopped)
- ½ cup all purpose gluten-free flour
- ½ cup chickpea flour
- ¼ cup arrowroot starch
- ½ tsp ground cinnamon
- ½ tsp baking soda
- ¼ tsp kosher salt
- In a dry pan, toast your pecans just until fragrant.
- Preheat oven to 350 and line a 9 inch square pan with parchment paper.
- In a small pot combine coconut milk, water, coconut oil, coconut sugar, and chopped figs. Warm just until figs are rehydrated and sugar has dissolved.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine flours, arrowroot starch, cinnamon, baking soda and salt.
- Add wet ingredients from the pot and toasted pecans, and stir until well mixed.
- Pour batter into parchment lined baking dish and bake for 25 minutes or until slightly firm to the touch and an inserted tooth pick comes out clean.
- Serve with coconut ice cream or frozen coconut kefir
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