Make Christmas past your Christmas present with my dark chocolate and coffee Figgy Pudding Cakes. This recipe is an excerpt from my Taste of Tucson cookbook. Spanish missionaries first planted figs in the Tucson Sonoran region in the 1600s and they are considered a heritage plant.
How could I not want some figgy pudding after hearing that song year-after-year? For this recipe, I turned to an idealized version of Christmas set in England sometime in 1800's where everyone has the appropriate accent, wears charming Victorian fashions, and eats figgy pudding and sugar plums along with their roasted goose. How enticing, right? Make Christmas past your Christmas present. Spanish missionaries first planted figs here in Tucson in the 1600s and they are considered a heritage plant.
Ingredients
- 8 fresh black figs such as Black Mission or Brown Turkey
- 1/2 cup milk
- 2.5 tablespoons of butter melted
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
- 1.5 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 cup all-purose flour
- 3/4 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup almond meal
- 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder. I use Ghirardelli's Premium Baking Cocoa.
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 cup of strong black coffee
- powered sugar to garnish
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Whisk together the milk, egg and vanilla in a medium sized mixing bowl. In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, chocolate powder, cinnamon and 1/4 cup of brown sugar, leaving 1/2 cup of sugar for the sauce. Be sure to break up any lumps. Slowly add the milk and egg mixture to the dry mixture and combine using a rubber spatula. Set aside.
- Pour the coffee into a saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar and bring to a boil.
- Cut half of the figs into quarters. Fill 4 large (approximately 8-10 oz. capacity) ramekins half-way with the chocolate mixture. Push the fig quarters into the batter and gently top with a whole fig.
- Spoon the coffee sauce around the fig, leaving about 1/8 inch of room at the top.
- Bake for 25-30 minutes or until firm. Remove from oven and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Serve warm.
Notes
This recipe was written for the lovely but now out of print Broadway & Thresher Magazine and published in my cookbook Taste of Tucson.
Hungry for More? Buy the Unofficial Elf Cookbook, The Unofficial Yellowstone Cookbook and the Taste of Tucson Cookbook!
