Hermione's Pantry

Figs are one of my favourite fruits, dried or fresh they are delicious. This cake uses dried figs as I was looking through our pantry and discovered a sad looking bag of dried figs that had been forgotten about. I also realised that I hadn’t made a cake since my niece’s birthday two weeks ago which is far too long to go without cake! This cake was definitely the product of looking in cupboards to see what I had to make a cake from but it turned out to be delicious! Fig rolls are one of my favourite biscuits and when you find a piece of fig in this cake it is like biting into a fig roll.

I bought some pears a couple of weeks ago and they just aren’t ripening so I thought they would hopefully be better if I baked with them. I enjoy replacing some flour in cakes with ground almonds as they make cakes taste even better. If I was making this in the winter I would put a teaspoon of cinnamon in but as it is spring I thought I would use vanilla in instead.

Pear, Fig and Almond Cake

Ingredients

• 2 medium eggs
• 50g soft dark brown sugar
• 50g golden caster sugar
• 100g butter
• 75g self raising flour
• 50g ground almonds
• 2 pears, peeled and cut into cm pieces
• 5 dried figs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• Handful of flaked almonds, to scatter on top

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C
2. Cream the butter and sugars together in a bowl until pale and fluffy.
3. Add the eggs and vanilla along with the flour and ground almonds, then mix until smooth.
4. Add the pears and figs, mix until they are distributed throughout the mixture.
5. Place in a lined 18cm round tin then scatter the top with flaked almonds.
6. Bake for 35 minutes, leave to cool.

Enjoy! H x