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Fig and Almond Cake

By David Tanis

Fig and Almond Cake
Karsten Moran for The New York Times
Total Time
1 hour
Rating
5(1,728)
Comments
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Figs are baked into an almond batter for this rustic cake to have with coffee or tea. With figs, ripeness is everything. A ripe fig (the object of your desire) is soft, yielding, beginning to crack, nearly wrinkled. When you cut into it, the flesh is bright and juicy and the taste is ethereal.

Featured in: The Fig Now Yields Its Charms

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Ingredients

Yield:1 9-inch cake
  • 4tablespoons butter, melted, plus butter for greasing pan
  • 1cup natural raw almonds (not blanched)
  • ¼cup sugar, plus 2 tablespoons for sprinkling
  • ¼cup all-purpose flour
  • ½teaspoon baking powder
  • ⅛teaspoon cinnamon
  • ⅛teaspoon salt
  • 3eggs, beaten
  • 2tablespoons honey
  • ½teaspoon almond extract
  • 12 to 14ripe figs
Ingredient Substitution Guide

Preparation

  1. Step 1

    Heat oven to 375 degrees. Butter a 9-inch fluted tart pan or pie pan; set aside. Put almonds and ¼ cup sugar in a food processor and grind to a coarse powder. Add flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt; pulse to combine.

  2. Step 2

    In a mixing bowl, whisk together eggs, melted butter, honey and almond extract. Add almond mixture and beat for a minute until batter is just mixed. Pour batter into pan.

  3. Step 3

    Remove stem from each fig and cut in half. Arrange fig halves cut-side up over the batter. Sprinkle figs with sugar and bake for 30 minutes, until golden outside and dry at center when probed with a cake tester. Cool before serving.

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Ratings

5 out of 5
1,728 user ratings
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Comments

Mark R

Simple to make, and delicious. I substituted 3/4 cup of almond flour for the raw almonds, both to avoid having to grind them and because I had it on hand. The cake was moist and almondy and the figs were, well, perfectly figgy.

Robert

1 cup whole almonds weighs 152g, so when substituting with almond flour instead of whole nuts, use weight not volume.

brutallyfrank

I made it with small Italian plums and it was amazing! I sprinkled the plums with cinnamon and sugar before baking. The plums released a lot of juice but I let it sit in the pan awhile to reabsorb them. Definitely a keeper!

DDV

This was delicious. Thank you for the suggestion of almond flour with the weight. The cake came out perfectly and will be made whenever it is fig season.

Josee

I made this last evening and it was a huge success. I already had some natural almond flour so I used that. As an experiment from previous comments, I weighed my flour but to equal the weight 1 cup of almonds I would have needed a lot more than 1 cup of almond flour so instead I decided that 3/4 of a cup sounded right, I actually added a couple more tablespoons so I almost had 1 cup. The result was perfect, moist cake, perfectly cooked figs. I used only 10 figs as they were quite big.

David

This is a perennial favorite. Every one loves it. It’s delicious and fairly easy to make. And it looks gorgeous. We have a fig tree and when the figs come, they come fast and heavy. A couple of these “tarts” is a great way to use up a daily fig harvest. I do the recipe as is. The Cuisinarted almonds are a bit courser than almond flour which adds to the texture. The tarts freeze well, but the figs go moldy in a few days even in a fridge. Fortunately, finishing up a tart quickly isn’t an issue.

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