One of my favourite breakfast noshes is a slice of my father’s homemade banana bread. The taste memories associated with this wonderful baked good take me back to my childhood, and messily helping him to prepare a batch or slurping the remnants of batter.
Unfortunately, my dear old dad lives halfway across the country now, and has for years, so I don’t often get to taste his personal version anymore. Instead, I use his banana and butter-stained recipe with a few extra tweaks of my own. It must be pretty decent too, because I’ve seen the Everyman turn down offers of banana bread solely on the assumption that it won’t measure up to mine (how sweet!)
Yet sometimes the tastebuds get tired, possibly even a little bit bored. As I sat at my desk and munched a slice of loaf yesterday, I started to ponder interesting flavor combinations and devise experimental opportunities. Then, out of nowhere it hit me like a ton of bricks; figs. Why had it never occurred to me before? Bananas are smooth and sweet and creamy and coincidentally, so are figs. I saw the potential immediately, so I googled fig bread to see if anyone else had thought of it before, and came across a handful of iterations. Bolstered by my discovery, I resolved to make a loaf that night (and I did, prior to my run in with the mandolin).
Foodie’s Fig Loaf
1 c. apple juice
2 tbsp butter
0.25 tsp salt
1.25 c. dried figs, pureed or fresh figs, mashed
0.75 c. whole wheat flour
1 c. flour
0.5 tsp baking powder
0.25 baking soda
2 eggs
0.33 c. sugar
0.33 c. chocolate chips
0.5 tsp vanilla extract
0.5 tsp chocolate extract
grated rind of 1 medium lemon
Preheat oven to 350*. Heat apple juice in a small saucepan until boiling, add butter, salt and figs. Stir to combine, remove from heat and cool to room temperature. In a medium bowl add flours, baking powder and soda, sugar and lemon rind. Crack 2 eggs into the cooled fig mixture, add the extracts and stir well. Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly, then add the wet and stir until just combined. Add chocolate chips and stir a little more, then pour into a lightly greased loaf pan. Bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre of the loaf comes out clean.
Makes 1 loaf.
The version I concocted on Thursday had the flavor profile I was looking for, but the texture was a little off, owing to only roughly chopping the figs, instead of pureeing them. So if you want a rather stark textural contrast, by all means leave them chunked. But for my purposes, I think I like it better as a smooth and crumbly loaf. Enjoy!
Until next time…
I stumbled across some imported moscioni figs at that same Italian importer yesterday. They were purchased with this recipe in mind!
I hope you enjoy it!
Being such a banana bread fiend it was somewhat of a departure for me, but I definitely think once the texture issue was worked out, it will get more play in my repertoire now!
I’m growing several small fig trees on our roof this year and am looking forward to a batch of bread made with their spoils
So, the texture issue wa simply the figs being pureed? I was thinking of possibly soaking the figs in some booze, then pureeing them. Thoughts? Grand Marnier, perhaps?
For me the biggest setback was the texture, but this is just a personal preference. When I make banana bread for instance, I like the banana to be a smooth puree, not a chunky mass. It’s not right or wrong, it’s just me.
With the fig bread my biggest problem with the first batch was the chunkiness of the dried figs and their similarity to the chunky chocolate chips. I soaked the figs in warmed apple juice the first time after chopping them, but it didn’t make enough of a difference in the texture to me. Soaking them in booze is also a viable option, though my other half commented that it is already similar in flavour to a Christmas cake (I got the impression that he didn’t care for that similarity either). I would think that soaking them in booze might exacerbate that, but again, that’s really just a taste preference. If I was soaking in booze myself, I’d probably choose something else because I don’t like Grand Marnier (oranges); I’d probably pick an amaretto instead.
Either way, let me know how you make out!
[...] recent experiments with chocolate fig bread convinced me that I could successfully recreate the strawberry lemon loaf that the Everyman loves [...]