Does anyone remember the old Fig Newton commercial, “its not a cookie, its fruit and cake”?. Well, this week I made my own “fruit and cake”. P and I have not bought any pre-packaged cookies for almost a year now. As I mentioned in my previous post on cleaner eating…we still consume sugar and flour…so we are not model clean eaters but then again I’m not pretending I am.
This recipe is by Megan Scott and was featured on Food 52, she calls them “Fig Keplers”. I prefer Fruit and Cake…because it makes me laugh. I am not featuring the full recipe because I have no new additions or changes for you from the original. Baking is one of those things I’m not brave (or knowledgeable) enough to ad-lib. So why am I even featuring it? Well, so glad you asked.
Let’s look at the ingredients:
For the cookie dough
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
10 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) butter, softened
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 large egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Zest of one orange
For the fig filling
1 pound dried figs, cut into small pieces
1/2 cup water
This is all of the ingredients, 10 whole ingredients and only 2 ingredients make up the filling, and one is water. Let’s compare that to the ones you buy at the store..also they are now apparently only referred to as Newtons. Newtons (the fig variety) has 20 ingredients, 2 of those being natural and artificial flavor (so who knows what that entails). When you make them at home you know exactly what you are consuming and you can easily identify ingredients; the same can not be said for those in the package. So, while we may still be eating sugar or flour we are cutting out the unknowns and extra “filler” and “stabilizing” ingredients. These do not look (especially mine) like the traditional but they taste almost identical. The dough smells exactly how commercial fig newtons smell..I was so shocked when I made it. Would it be easier just to buy at the store?…well duh. But this is the point, would I make these every week…umm NO (it took me three days to make these)….it was work to get the cookies fruit and cake so we are not eating cookies every week because some weeks I’m not going to invest the time. Focusing on real food (whether you are the kale, Paleo, no sugar kind or like me the sugar, flour, meat kind) changes your perspective and your habits.
Here again is the link to the full recipe. It was not really that hard…it is a process though because you need to let the dough chill (I let mine chill for two days)…hence why it took me three days 🙂 My process was no where as nice or neat as the pictures. I was patching holes in my dough logs with pieces from the end, but all turned out well and they stayed together! I also had issues piping out the fig filling so next time I may just spoon it on.
The Rest of the Week:
- Chicken Pot Pie with Rosemary Biscuits: so good..we are on a cozy meals kick lately. BTW, 3 oz of butter is equal to 6 tablespoons of butter (why it is written like this is beyond me). Also I added celery and used diced yellow onion in place of whole onions.
- Cabbage Soup: used Coon Rock Farm ground beef (1lb), used a full head of cabbage b/c it was small, threw in the remaining parsnip we had left over, yes we cooked the rice in the soup (not pre-cooked) and used brown rice instead of white, it turned out great.
- Reuben Grilled Cheese: this is a no meat reuben, and it was awesome. We used locally made sauerkraut.
- Melina’s Spinach Ravioli w/ Lemon Ricotta (made local) with this sauce: I love ravioli but I found it hard to figure out what sauce to pair with them. If you make a ravioli recipe, please include a suggested sauce..thanks, me!
