Figs are not native to Ohio, nor do they grow well here. However, am thrilled every August when they begin to show up in our grocery stores. I race to use them where I can, be it a breakfast, jam, or dessert before they disappear in early September until the next year.
To me, figs have come to symbolize late summer, when the nights start to get a little bit cooler, football season is beginning, and you are savoring the last few true pool weekends of the year. They pair really well with warm spices like cinnamon and cloves, making any fig recipe a lovely transition into cozy season.
When I ran into this freeform pie recipe that really makes figs the star in Erin Jeanne McDowell’s cookbook The Book on Pie, I couldn’t wait to add this to my list of delicious fig recipes.
Late Summer Honeyed Fig Pie
This week marks a return to using our oven again, as the stifling heat this summer brought finally cooled a bit and offered us some relief.
- Type of pan: No cast irons this week, just a normal sheet tray. However, I must note that if you follow this recipe to a tee, you need to use a jumbo 15″ by 20 1/2″ baking sheet. I did not have one of these, so needed to downsize my pie a bit to fit a standard 18″ x 13″ sheet tray.
- Bake time: Formed in a single layer, almost like a pizza, this is a quick and easy pie that only needs like 30-40 minutes to bake.
- Type of filling: The filling is super simple – just a pile of figs mixed with some warm honey and apricot jam. You can also feel free to use flavorings like Fiori di Sicilia extract or spices like cinnamon and clove.
- Type of topping: The recipe offers recommendations to make this pie even tastier. One is a mascarpone whipped cream, which I must say is absolutely delightful on top of this pie. However, this year I wanted to change things up and opted to do a layer of ricotta below the figs instead of the whipped topping. We did like the ricotta layer, but overall preferred the mascarpone whipped cream pairing, so would return to that in the future. Another downside – using dairy necessitated that we store this pie in the fridge rather than on the counter. Thankfully, I didn’t find that the fridge affected the pie dough texture too badly.
- Type of crust: This recipe calls for a double recipe of all butter pie crust. To keep things interesting, this year I opted for a slight variation that added lemon zest and a half teaspoon of cardamom to the dough. We could really taste the lemon, which seemed to intensify every day that we ate the pie. However, it was harder to detect the cardamom. Next time, I would be tempted to double the spice level.
I was overall very happy with how this pie turned out – especially the flavors! The edge of the pie dough baked up beautifully, puffing up in the over and browning nicely with the egg wash. However, the bottom of my dough did get a bit soggy towards the middle, which is not something I remember happening last year. I am thinking I either used too many figs or that this was caused by the addition of the ricotta. If caused by the figs, a potential future fix could be to cook them down in the honey and jam before topping the pie with them.