tiger fig, fig jam, FIG NEWTON!

Someone at my office left me a tiger fig on my desk while I was in a 1/2 day meeting. It was so beautiful sitting alone on my desk.

what a beauty!

inside and out

This and the FB comments lead me to my next recipe testing. HOMEMADE FIG NEWTONS!

Step 1: get more figs
Got these from farm market, not sure what variety, looks like Brown Turkish

Getting ready to be jammed

inside is almost as pretty as the tiger

Step 2: find a recipe I like

Surprisingly I didn't find a whole lot of recipes that I want to try. I finally found this link that sounded interesting http://www.sugardishme.com/fresh-fig-newtons/. I liked that she added brown sugar and lemon. I also looked in my jam book and they had a recipe for fig bars. I decided to make up my own recipe for the jam [so I had extra for toast] and used the sugardishme.com cookie. I used a minneola orange and vanilla bean in my jam recipe.I thought it would make go well with the cookie. 

Step 3: make the jam

stems and a zested and squeezed orange

Here's my made-up recipe. Not too sweet, a little bit citrus-y. Hope you like it.

Princess Hot Flash Figgy Jam
This made 4 half pints and 1 4oz bottles

About 2 lbs of figs, chopped
zest and juice from 1 orange--I used Minneola orange
1/2 of vanilla bean, split (optional)
2 c white sugar, you may want to taste your fig for sweetness, need more sugar

Put the figs [I quartered the figs but it think if I chopped it more that it would have broken down faster], zest and juice of the orange, vanilla bean [I kind of recycled the vanilla bean from the blackberry jam. I added it because I thought it would go well with fig and the orange] to wide pot.

figs with orange zest and juice

Turn the heat to medium high. When the figs starts bubbling and producing some juice, add the sugar. Mix sugar into the rest of the ingredients. Bring to boil then turn down to medium to simmer. Keep stirring and mushing at the figs so it breaks down to smaller pieces. The jam should get thicker, look glossy and the bubbling will slow and the bubbles get bigger. Bubbles start plopping. That's when the jam is ready. 

thick and glossy

At this stage, put jam into sterilized bottles then can or refrigerate. I'm using one bottle for my cookies. 

beautiful reddish-purple color

Step 4: make the cookie dough

Working with Sugar Dish Me's fig newton cookie recipe, I can't wait to try this. I forgot to get pictures of the dough. Very sticky. Make sure you have everything prepped, could be a messy. Got the top cookie in the freezer with no major problem. I used a lot of butter. Put the rest of the dough into the pan. Again, used a lot of butter. Note: I would try and roll out the dough close to the size of the bottom cookie, wasn't paying attention when I rolled out the dough. Into the oven with the bottom cookie. Starting to smells great in the house.

Bottom done, now to spread the figgy jam on the cookie. I end up spreading 1 1/2 bottles or 1 1/2 cups of jam on the cookie.

one bottle of jam

This cookie smells great. The orange zest makes this cookie. Add the top cookie dough. rolled out too big, so I did patch with the extra dough. This dough seems to be very forgiving. I also would let the bottom cookie cool a little before spreading jam and adding top layer. Just for easier handling. Now into the oven.

top crust looks a little lumpy

Now just to wait. The house smell great. 

right out of the oven

See how forgiving the dough is the top looks great. Not as lumpy as it went in. 

Step 5: Taste

can't wait to taste. YUM!

This cookie is so worth the effort of making your own fig jam. So delicious. Perfectly sweet. I love the chunkiness of the jam and the orange flavor and scent in both the jam and cookie. If you see fresh figs, make jam then make these cookies.